Play every game like it will be your last. Football coaches have been passing down those wise words to players since they wore ties on the sidelines and helmets were made of leather.

Oklahoma defensive tackle Adrian Taylor has heard it many times, but now he has a better appreciation for the old adage.

“I understand it now,” he said.

Watch Taylor in his present form and you see a defensive tackle at the top of his game. Through four games, he’s already made 21⁄2 sacks and recorded eight tackles for one of, or perhaps the best defensive lines in college football. He’s been the run stuffer every great defense needs and shown surprising pass-rushing skills.

“He’s been in the backfield a lot, chasing the quarterback, made a bunch of good plays,” OU coach Bob Stoops said after the Sooners’ victory over TCU. “He’s getting better and better, playing hard. Adrian really showed up, no question.”

It’s hard to believe two years ago he was pondering a future that might not include football.

In the days leading up to the Sooners’ 2006 game against Texas, Taylor was lifting weights when he felt a pain shoot through his back and lower legs. He was doing the same squats he’d been doing for years, but something went wrong.

A crippling pain was the result of damaged discs in his back. Walking, sitting, doing just about anything came with pain shooting throughout his lower body. A slipped, ruptured or torn disc is incredibly painful. The disc presses on a spinal nerve and the pain spreads to the area of the body that the nerve serves. Any movement can cause the pain to flare up.

Taylor felt it constantly.

“I couldn’t even sit in the class room,” Taylor recalled. “I had to explain to my teachers that I had to get up and move around if I was going to be here. They understood. It was very painful. Even going to the restroom hurt.”

That kind of pain causes someone to evaluate their future, and Taylor had to think about his in football before it really got started. He was looking at a long rehab without the guarantee of a full recovery.

“The decision he had to make was whether or not he was going to hang his pads up or come back,” fellow tackle Cory Bennett said. “A decision like that affects your whole life.”

Bad backs are tough on any person, much less one asked to keep his weight around 300 pounds and constantly struggle with offensive linemen that are even bigger. There were no guarantees he wouldn’t have to spend his entire football career trying to protect his back.

Taylor stuck it out, but in some ways felt like an outcast.

While everyone else practiced, he went through rehab. They left blood and sweat on the practice field, while he couldn’t even make it out there to watch.