Taylor Lewan at Michigan: How a Defensive End from Arizona Became a First-Round Left Tackle
The Arizona Kid Who’d Never Played Offensive Line
Taylor Lewan played defensive end for three years at Cactus Shadows High School in Cave Creek, Arizona. He recorded 96 tackles and seven sacks in two seasons on that side of the ball. His senior year, he transferred to Chaparral High School in Scottsdale and switched positions entirely – offensive tackle, a position he’d never played in a real game. One season later, he was one of the most recruited offensive linemen in the country.
That’s either a remarkable development story or proof that his raw physical tools were always the headline. Probably both. The Frank Kush Award as Arizona’s top interior offensive lineman, a first-team all-state nod from the Arizona Republic, the Under Armour All-American game – all of it came from a single year at a new school playing a new position. Rich Rodriguez recruited him out of Scottsdale and brought him to Ann Arbor in 2009. Lewan redshirted that first season, which in hindsight looks like the right call.
His father Dave played offensive line at the University of Minnesota, so the football bloodline was there. Still, the speed of the position transition is something that gets buried in the resume summary version of his story. A defensive end with one year of offensive line experience, arriving at one of the country’s most demanding programs, being handed a starting job by his second active season. That’s the less-told part.
Year by Year: What Lewan Actually Did in Ann Arbor
He appeared in 11 games in 2010, starting nine of them after taking over the left tackle job from Mark Huyge in the fourth game against Bowling Green. Michigan’s offense that year was built around Denard Robinson’s legs, and the offensive line’s job was less about protecting a pocket and more about creating space in an open-field running game. Lewan committed false starts and personal fouls with some regularity that season – CollegeFootballNews.com still named him to its Freshman All-America second team, which tells you how the individual production read despite the penalties.
2011 is where it started to matter on a team level. He started all 13 games, the Wolverines finished 11-2, and Michigan beat Virginia Tech in overtime in the Sugar Bowl – their first BCS bowl win in program history. He was named second-team All-Big Ten by the coaches, honorable mention by the media. Unremarkable on paper compared to what followed, but that bowl game was real and the offensive line was part of why Michigan ran for over 200 yards against Virginia Tech’s defense.
Then 2012. He started all 13 games again, was named first-team All-American by Walter Camp, the Associated Press, ESPN.com, and SI.com. Won the Big Ten Rimington-Pace Offensive Lineman of the Year award. Won the Hugh R. Rader Memorial Award as Michigan’s top offensive lineman. Also scored a touchdown on a fumble recovery against Massachusetts in September – the first Michigan offensive lineman to score since Bob Erben in 1948.
He could have left after that season. He was a first-round grade in 2013’s draft. He didn’t leave.
Why He Came Back – and What He Said About It
At Big Ten media days in Chicago before his senior season, Lewan said something that got quoted everywhere: “All I know at Michigan is failure.” He’d started since 2010, won awards since 2012, been one of the most decorated offensive linemen in the country – and his honest read of his own college career was that it had failed. Michigan was 1-3 against Ohio State with him on the roster. They hadn’t won anything that felt like it counted.
That’s a harder thing to say than it sounds. Most players in his position package the return as loyalty or development. Lewan said it was about championships they hadn’t won. That’s either refreshing honesty or a player who cared about the wrong scoreboard, depending on how you feel about individual legacy versus team results. But it explains the decision better than most public explanations do.
Brady Hoke said Lewan played his best football in 2013, attributing it to maturity. The results support that. He started all 13 games, did not allow a single sack the entire season, won the Rimington-Pace award for the second straight year, won the Rader award again, and was named first-team All-American by the Sporting News. Michigan still went 7-6 and lost the Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl to Kansas State 31-14. He finished his career at Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe – the same venue where he’d played in the Arizona state championship game for Chaparral five years earlier.
The Awards Case, Stacked Up Plainly
Two-time Big Ten Rimington-Pace Offensive Lineman of the Year (2012, 2013). Two-time Hugh R. Rader Memorial Award winner. Two-time first-team All-American. Three-time All-Big Ten selection – second team in 2011, first team in both 2012 and 2013. Semifinalist for the Rotary Lombardi Award. Named to the BTN Big Ten All-Decade Team for the 2010s. He wore number 77 because Jake Long and Jon Jansen had worn it before him – that’s a specific choice, not coincidence, and it tells you how seriously he took what Michigan offensive linemen were supposed to represent.
He’s only the ninth Michigan offensive lineman to start four full seasons in program history. That number gets overlooked because the awards are louder, but it means something about durability and program trust. Forty-eight career starts, 41 of them consecutive.
Jake Long is the obvious comparison – Michigan’s other consensus All-American left tackle who went first overall in 2008. Lewan went 11th in 2014. Long had one All-American season; Lewan had two. Long didn’t have the off-field complications Lewan did entering the draft. Scouts generally had Long as a cleaner prospect. Whether Lewan was the better college player is a fair debate, and there’s no clean resolution – but the back-to-back conference player of the year awards make the argument hard to dismiss.
What Kind of Player He Was – Film and Combine
At 6-foot-7 and 309 pounds, he ran the 40-yard dash in 4.87 seconds at the 2014 combine – fastest among all offensive linemen in his draft class and the fourth-fastest time among offensive linemen across the previous four combine cycles. His bench press was 335 pounds in high school; by the time he reached the combine he was a different kind of athlete at the same position.
Scouts who watched film consistently noted his awareness of pressure angles. He didn’t just react to rushers; he anticipated. The background as a defensive end – knowing where the gaps were before the snap – translated in a way that’s genuinely hard to teach. You can coach footwork. You can’t easily coach a lineman to think like the guy across from him.
The negatives on film were real too. He played through the whistle, sometimes past it. He was aggressive in a way that produced flags at inconvenient moments. Bleacher Report’s 2014 scouting breakdown called it “playing like a total meathead” and meant it partly as a compliment. Scouts worried about whether the competitive aggression would cost his team on the field or off it. As it turned out: sometimes both.
Michigan’s offensive line in 2013 was shaky around him. He was the one piece the rest of the team could count on. That context matters when reading the zero-sack senior season number – he was carrying that line, not being carried by it.
The Incidents at Michigan
In October 2013, during a 29-6 loss to Michigan State, Lewan twisted the facemask of Spartans safety Isaiah Lewis. The Big Ten reviewed it, concluded no “unsportsmanlike conduct” violation had occurred, and didn’t suspend him. Michigan didn’t suspend him either. Lewan publicly apologized on Monday after the game – said he’d lost his composure and that it didn’t represent the University of Michigan the way it should. He said he tried to find Lewis after the game to apologize in person and couldn’t.
The December 1, 2013 incident was more serious. Following Michigan’s 42-41 loss to Ohio State – Lewan’s final home game at the Big House, his fourth year and his fourth loss to the Buckeyes – an altercation occurred early in the morning in the 1200 block of South University Avenue in Ann Arbor. Two Ohio State fans reported being assaulted. James Hughes said Lewan punched him in the face. Lewan said at the NFL combine in February 2014 that he was breaking up a fight, not starting one.
Charges were filed in April 2014: one count of aggravated assault, two counts of assault or assault and battery. His ex-girlfriend Alexandra Dileo – sister of Michigan receiver Drew Dileo, one of Lewan’s close friends on the team – told police he knocked Hughes to the ground and punched him, and that she’d heard him tell his mother the morning after that he’d knocked someone out. Lewan denied the allegations. His attorneys disputed her account. In October 2014, he pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor charges of drunk and disorderly and disturbing the peace in Washtenaw County district court. The aggravated assault count did not end in conviction.
A separate allegation from 2009 – that Lewan had threatened a woman who said she was sexually assaulted by his Michigan teammate Brendan Gibbons – was never charged. At his introductory press conference with Tennessee after the draft, he denied ever making such a statement and said his mother raised him better. The Titans selected him anyway at 11th overall.
Brady Hoke, when asked about Lewan’s character heading into the draft, cited his volunteer work at C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital in Ann Arbor. “I believe his character will shine through,” Hoke said on NFL Network. That’s the kind of thing coaches say, but Hoke wasn’t wrong that the hospital work was real and documented.
The Draft, and What Michigan Produced
May 8, 2014, Radio City Music Hall. Lewan went 11th overall to the Tennessee Titans – the first Big Ten player off the board, the 45th Michigan Wolverine ever drafted in the first round, and the first Michigan offensive lineman taken in the first round since Jake Long went first overall in 2008. He signed a four-year, $11.48 million fully guaranteed contract with a $6.67 million signing bonus.
He chose number 77 with the Titans for the same reason he wore it at Michigan.
What followed: three consecutive Pro Bowl selections in 2016, 2017, and 2018. A five-year, $80 million contract extension before the 2018 season – at the time of signing, the largest contract in NFL history for an offensive lineman, with $50 million guaranteed. He allowed five sacks in 15 starts in 2015, zero sacks in 2016. The zero-sack senior season at Michigan wasn’t a fluke; it was a preview.
He was released by Tennessee in February 2023 with a failed physical designation after knee injuries ended his final two seasons early. He’d started 98 games as a Titan – ninth most in franchise history since 1999, trailing only four other offensive linemen.
Since retiring he co-hosts Bussin’ With The Boys with former teammate Will Compton, one of the more successful NFL-adjacent podcasts running. He also owns a sports bar in Nashville and co-founded a skincare company. He received the Titans’ Walter Payton Man of the Year Award in 2020.
Where He Sits in Michigan Offensive Line History
Any honest ranking of Michigan offensive linemen from the past two decades includes Lewan near the top. Back-to-back conference player of the year awards, two All-American selections, a zero-sack senior season on a line that needed him to be the entire story – that’s a case that holds up. He’s not a cleaner legacy than Jake Long. He’s a more complicated one, and probably a longer professional career when the final accounting is done.
He told reporters at Big Ten media days in 2013 that all he knew at Michigan was failure. Three Pro Bowls, 98 NFL starts, and a historically large contract later, the Michigan chapter looks different in retrospect. He didn’t win the Big Ten title or a national championship. Michigan went 7-6 his senior year. Those facts don’t change. But the player that program sent to Tennessee – technically refined, physically dominant, with a defensive lineman’s understanding of pass rush built into his muscle memory – that player was built in Ann Arbor.
Comments