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Fred Taylor blames game-week partying for falling short of breaking NFL single-game rushing record
By Andrew Olson
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Fred Taylor had many memorable moments in his Jacksonville Jaguars career. The former Florida Gator great had the chance of going in the NFL record books with a single-game record, but some game-week partying caught up to him.
Taylor recently appeared on Trey Wingo’s Half-Forgotten History podcast and revisited the time he rushed for 234 yards against the Pittsburgh Steelers in the 2000 season. Taylor blames his game-week fun for missing out on carries that could have made his monster game one for the record books.
“It was the year 2000 at Three Rivers Stadium, I go for 234 [yards] and I missed, I don’t know, 10 minutes or so in the fourth quarter because I was dehydrated,” Taylor recalled, via Jaguars Wire. “The few days leading up to it, myself and a few guys went down to Orlando to party. We had to be back Saturday morning for a team meeting at 8 o’clock. I think we rolled back to Jacksonville in a limo.
“We pull up to the stadium around 7:30, we get out and everybody’s leaking whatever they were drinking. We get in, we fly to Pittsburgh, thank God it was a Sunday night game, because the next day we were all hungover doing IVs … that didn’t work. We get out there and we start the game off, I’m cutting left and right, just chunks: 20, 10, eight, 7, 20, 30. I cramped up. Ask my teammates, it was crazy. I cramped up, I couldn’t finish the game.”
For more than 2 decades the record belonged to Walter Payton, who rushed for 275 yards in a 1977 game.
“Walter Payton — he’s my idol, he’s the reason I started loving the running back position and I wanted to play running back — I wanted to break his single-game record that day,” Taylor told Wingo. “But I cramped up and couldn’t finish the game. So that’s my one big regret.”
In the 2000 season, Corey Dillon broke the record with a 278-yard outing. The record has since been broken twice more by Jamal Lewis (295 yards, 2003) and Adrian Peterson (296 yards, 2007).
It’s one thing to break Walter Payton’s then single-game rushing record… it’s quite another to ALMOST break it completely hung over ?
Former @jaguars great Fred Taylor – @FredTaylorMade – is our guest on Half-Forgotten History.
? to full episode (link in bio) pic.twitter.com/WpkKNABMep
— trey wingo (@wingoz) October 6, 2022
Andrew writes about sports to fund his love of live music and collection of concert posters. He strongly endorses the Hall of Fame campaigns of Fred Taylor and Andruw Jones.
