Former Tennessee Vols defensive back Alontae Taylor signed a free agent deal with the Tennessee Titans earlier this offseason worth $60 million over three years.

Taylor, who is from Tennessee, landed with the Titans after spending the first four seasons of his NFL career with the New Orleans Saints.

It’s one of the more impressive contracts that a former Vol has landed in recent years.

And it may never have happened if not for former Tennessee head coach Jeremy Pruitt, who moved Taylor from wide receiver to defensive back just weeks after arriving on campus in 2018.

Taylor appeared on In the Bayou With Tyrann Mathieu this week and he detailed the move and how it made him question his love for football at the time.

“I got to college as a receiver and got moved to playing corner three weeks into spring ball,” said Taylor. “And I hated it so much. That was my first time that I ever felt some kind of conflict between the sport and my heart. Like, ‘Do I really love the game?’ I’m changing positions and I’m out here getting beat.

“And I just tapped in to my academic advisor at the time — I call her my second mom now — and I just expressed to her how my heart and my mind just weren’t the same. They weren’t into it the same way it was before. And from that moment, just hearing her give me some advice on ways to look at it and ways to think about it, it helped me. And it allowed me to go out there and play and go hard. And ultimately, I am who I am today because of that specific moment. And moving forward, I’ve always felt like if nobody else will, I will.”

That’s powerful stuff, and a great lesson to young athletes. Things aren’t always going to go like you plan. There will be adversity. But sometimes the best things come from adversity. That’s certainly true for Taylor — who knows where his career would’ve gone if he had stuck at wide receiver.

This isn’t the first time, by the way, that Taylor has talked about the move to defensive back at Tennessee. He went a little more in-depth on it during an interview with CBS Sports last year.

“I was a quarterback (in high school), didn’t throw the ball too much, really [just] ran the ball,” said Taylor. “So every team was recruiting me as an athlete. The schools that did offer me were like Georgia Tech and Louisville, that’s when they had Lamar (Jackson), so a guy who can kind of run the ball. So basically, I committed to Tennessee, and our head coach Butch Jones got fired. I decommitted, almost went to Georgia after my official visit out there, and then Jeremy Pruitt gets hired at Tennessee. I don’t know anybody on the staff, but I just decided to stay home (Taylor is a Tennessee native).

“I went to Tennessee to play wide receiver. I was getting recruited as an athlete out of high school. So I went to Tennessee in the spring, early enrolled after graduating high school early. I played receiver for three weeks. Then we had a team meeting. Coach says he’s gonna move a couple guys for three days. You know, I’m sitting there [thinking] I’m not getting moved. I’ve never played nothing else but offense. And so Pruitt calls my name out and I go to his meeting room, and he tells me I’m gonna go to corner. And I was really upset. I was so upset because I never played it, and I’m a competitive guy. So we get out there in that (Nick) Saban kind of system, we’re doing like two-on-twos and I’m getting cooked. I’m getting cooked. And I just hated it, man, for a long time. I just kept asking Pruitt, ‘Can I go back to receiver?’ And, you know, he just basically ended up telling me that as long as he’s the head coach, I’m never playing receiver and he feels like I could be a top corner. So I started playing corner my freshman year in college, and played four years. In the final year, I played with the Josh Heupel team (at UT) and got drafted.”