Roosevelt Taylor
New Orleans Sports Hall of Fame
Football, 1956-72
Clark High School/Grambling State/NFL
Inducted: 1979
After a standout career as a three-sport letterman at Clark High School, Roosevelt “Rosey” Taylor walked onto the Grambling football team before earning a scholarship. He was a key part of Grambling’s first SWAC Championship defense in 1960 – a group which included four future NFL All-Pros (Taylor, Willie Brown, Buck Buchanan, Ernie Ladd).
After his college career, he was signed as an undrafted free agent by the Chicago Bears in 1961 and went on to a 14-year NFL career with the Bears (1961-69), the San Francisco 49ers (1969-71) and the Washington Redskins (1972).
In 1963, the 5-11, 186-pound Taylor led the Bears in interceptions (9) and kick returns as they won the NFL Championship. He also had three fumble recoveries as his 12 takeaways remain the Bears’ single-season record. He was named first-team All-Pro and voted to the Pro Bowl. He followed that with back-to-back seasons being selected as a second-team All-Pro.
In 1968, he scored six touchdowns, including a 96-yard interception return, and made his second Pro Bowl appearance.
He credited those ball-hawking skills to a simple lesson he learned from Bears defensive coordinator George Allen.
“He pounded it into me that once that ball goes up in the air, it belongs to anybody who can get it,” Taylor said in an interview with
The Tribune.
In 1970 Taylor won the Eshmont Award, which is the 49ers' most prestigious annual honor. It is given each year to the Niner who best exemplifies the "inspirational and courageous play" of Len Eshmont, a player from the original 1946 Forty Niners' team. A few years later, he was among a group of athletes invited by President Nixon to the White House to participate in an anti-drug campaign.
A true iron man, Taylor started every game in 11 of his 12 seasons, missing just two games in his career, both in 1971 with San Francisco. Taylor played in 166 NFL games, starting 152. He played in 112 straight games with the Bears.
“I think they got a pretty good deal with me,” Taylor told GramblingLegends.net about his time with the Bears. “I was out there every second when I was with the Bears.”
He made his only Super Bowl appearance in his final year in the NFL, helping the Redskins to a Super Bowl VII loss to undefeated Miami. He started every game for Washington that year.
Taylor finished his 166-game NFL career with 32 career interceptions, including three that he returned for touchdowns. He also recovered 13 fumbles, returning one for a score and forced a pair of fumbles.
Taylor was ranked as the 43rd best player in Bears history by the
Chicago Tribune in 2019.
Born July 4, 1937, Taylor was raised in the Lower Ninth Ward and attended McCarthy Elementary School. He was a three-sport star at Clark, excelling most in basketball.
“Basketball was my best sport,” Taylor said in a 2012 interview with
The Louisiana Weekly. “When I was in the 11th grade I could dunk the basketball with two hands even though I was only 5’11”.
At Grambling, the former basketball star evolved into a star after walking on to the football team. As a sophomore, he scored on runs of 87 and 75 yards in back-to-back games. Though it was on defense where he truly established himself.
Robinson’s 1960 SWAC championship team allowed just 7.7 points per game while posting three shutouts. The shared title was the first for Robinson (it was just the third year of the SWAC) and he would go on to earn 18 total league championships.
"Our greatest ball players at the black schools back in the day would have beat the living hell out of the best — Michigan State, Ohio State and all these schools — if we could have played against them,” Taylor once said in a 2012 interview in
Louisiana Weekly.
Taylor’s son, Brian, played in the NFL briefly with the Bears and Buffalo in 1989 and 1991, respectively, after starring at St. Augustine and at Oregon State.
Taylor died on May 29, 2020, at the age of 82. He was inducted into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame in 1996 and the Grambling Hall of Fame in 2010.
