CLEVELAND, Tenn. - Few have traveled a road like Bradley Central High School's Taye Cobb has had to endure in a 40-month span.
An athlete described by one basketball coach as a "five-tool player" and compared by a former Cleveland football coach to Quincy Prigmore - a former all-state quarterback who played at Tennessee - Cobb had his life changed on May 7, 2014, at the corner of Keith Street and Peerless Road in Cleveland. He was a passenger when a car driven by his uncle, O'Neal "Junior" Ware, was involved in an accident.
Cobb was asleep at the time of the wreck but was trapped in the floorboard and had to be cut out of the car. Ware was ejected from the car.
"When the ambulance arrived, they didn't know about me," Cobb said this week. "They went to my uncle, who told them to not worry about him, to get me out of the car."
Bradley Central's Taye Cobb is back playing football even if not at the level projected for him before he was severely injured in a car wreck in May 2014.
Receiver Taye Cobb poses on the Bear Stadium field at Bradley Central High School on Wednesday, Aug. 23, in Cleveland, Tenn.
He was airlifted to Erlanger and later transported by Puckett to the Shepherd Center in Atlanta, where he spent three months trying to recover. He was unconscious for nearly a week, and once he woke up he found out that Ware had died from injuries sustained in the wreck.
Cobb suffered a brain injury, a fractured bone in the back of his neck, a ruptured spleen, bruised lungs, a fractured wrist and a torn meniscus. He spent two months in a wheelchair.
He had to relearn basic motor skills and forgot things a lot.
Cobb previously was the quarterback on Cleveland Middle's football team and the best player on a basketball team that won the middle school state tournament. He was chosen the tournament's MVP.
And family genes would suggest that he was bound for special things athletically. His father, Keith Cobb, was an all-state running back at Cleveland and caught the winning touchdown pass in the Blue Raiders' 26-21 victory over Brentwood Academy in the 1993 Class 4A state championship game. He went on to play at Memphis.
Taye's mother, Shema Davis, played basketball at Jacksonville State. His uncle Kevin, Keith's twin, also played football at Memphis, and his kickoff return for a touchdown against Tennessee in 1996 helped the Tigers upset the seventh-ranked Volunteers and won an ESPY for play of the year.
Two of Taye's uncles, Alphonso and Cori Pugh, played college basketball, with Alphonso scoring 1,141 points for the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and Cori a multi-year starter at Lee University.
Taye, who was around 6-foot-3 in eighth grade, was on a similar path. In a flash, that path was altered severely.
"He was the best player in that class," Cleveland basketball coach Jason McCowan said. "I envisioned him being the leading scorer and a great character kid. A middle school coach they had played against told me they thought he was unbelievable, and they couldn't stop him because he could shoot, had size, could take players off the dribble but could take them inside as well."
He spent three seasons on the Cleveland High basketball team, helping only sparingly while trying to get back to being a shell of the player he once was. After his junior year, he transferred to Bradley, and after a lot of politicking to his mom and help from others, she finally relented to let him play football again.
"He's been trying to get back on the field for two years now," Davis said. "Of course I wouldn't let him because the doctor said if he got another concussion, his chances of recovery were slim to none. But he wanted to play, his dad wanted him to play, everybody wanted him to play, and it was like everybody was against me. I thought, 'Was I the only one to experience everything that happened? What we went through?' But he begged and begged, so I sat down with my mom and talked to the doctor, and he told me that Taye couldn't live his life in a bubble; I was going to have to let him live."
Cobb plays with a special helmet, but he's playing. He's spent years watching players he knew at one time "I was better than" maturing and growing into their own while he had to take a back seat. Cobb even considered quitting at one point but said he couldn't because his uncle was "looking down" on him.
He now stands 6-4, 225 pounds, and has recovered physically to be close to the same level of athlete he was before that night over three years ago. But even as talented as he is - Bradley coaches said he can still throw a football more than 60 yards - he's so far behind from not playing that it's unlikely he'll play more than a little.
Not that he minds much. He expects to contribute on the basketball team and likely will graduate with a grade point average of better than 3.0. His career arc is far from what it was expected to be, but it's far from over. He's looking at getting bachelor's and master's degrees in math and is considering walking on to play either basketball or football in college.
He has a "testimony" for others.
"The best lesson I took from the wreck was that God wanted me to get closer to him," Cobb said. "I wasn't as close to him as I needed to. I had just attended (church camp) Cherokee and I felt like it got me closer to him. He put me through that wreck to get closer to him; he left me here for a reason.
"The spot where the wreck happened is 30 seconds up the road from where I live, and I pass it every day going to and coming home from school. I ask myself sometimes what if it hadn't happened, how my future would have been. I knew I was good, and I felt like I could have gone far if it wasn't for the wreck, but on the other side I look at it (as) I'm alive, I can play sports, so I have a true testimony."
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenleytfp.