Quay Wiggles and Marlon Taylor were once the young prospects on the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga defense. Taylor was a part of head coach Rusty Wright’s first signing class in 2019 while Wiggles joined a year later.
Now they’re the leaders of their position group, and in some respects, leaders of the defense — and they couldn’t do it any more differently.
Taylor, the Southern Conference preseason Defensive Player of the Year and a preseason All-American with 6.5 sacks and 16 tackles for loss over the past three seasons, prefers to lead by doing. Wiggles, a preseason second-team all-conference selection who has four sacks and 10.5 tackles for loss in his career, is more vocal.
But with a combined 73 games and 38 starts under their collective belt, they’ve played a lot of football at the college level and seen a lot, which allows the two, along with fellow senior and former junior-college All-American E.J. Thomas, to lead what is a deep, talented room.