Inside HOKIE SPORTS | Vol. 12 No. 4 | March 2020

A s he cruised around the downtown area upon his return to Blacksburg, he found the memories coming back to him in waves. He rolled past his old church, where the same senior pastor still delivers sermons every Sunday morning. He went up Whipple Drive and saw the house where he and James Anderson, a longtime friend, high school teammate, and teammate at Virginia Tech, used to live. He even remembered the old route where he used to ride his bike to classes and to practices, a path with a few extra turns and hills that allowed him to get in some additional conditioning. But Darryl Tapp was quite unhappy when he realized that one of Blacksburg’s iconic landmarks no longer existed. “Mike’s Grill, man,” Tapp said. “That hurt me to my soul.” Most locals echoed those same sentiments when the small restaurant on Main Street closed in 2016, but they have soldiered on, finding quality burgers at other establishments. Tapp hopes to do so, too, especially now that he is back. Tapp returned to a place he considers a home in mid-December when Tech head football coach Justin Fuente named Tapp as a co- defensive line coach on his staff. The move came about as part of an inevitable staff reshuffling—one prompted when former defensive coordinator Bud Foster announced in August that he planned to retire following the 2019 season. Wanting a future career as a football coach, Tapp—who had been serving as a quality control coach at Vanderbilt—jumped at the opportunity to take another step toward his career goals, especially one that brought him to a place near and dear to him. “It’s unreal,” he said. “It still hasn’t set in that I’m back. It seems like every face that I’ve seen, I remember in some form or capacity. Every time I see somebody or talk to somebody or get shown a picture, tons of memories keep flooding back … It’s just an unreal kind of reoccurrence of events, so it’s pretty cool coming back.” In hiring Tapp, Fuente not only brought back one of the Hokies all- time greatest players, but also one of Hokie Nation’s all-time favorites. Sure, they loved his production on the field during his career from 2002-05. Yes, they reveled in his helping the school to its first ACC title. Of course, they expressed admiration of him for earning All- America honors as a senior. But more than all that, they respected him for his humility, a trait instilled in him from his family. He brought all those positive characteristics with him to Blacksburg in 2002. On the field, he forced fumbles and made a bunch of sacks and tackles for losses. Yet his work with Athletes in Action, his attending of “Field Days” at local elementary schools, and his volunteering within the community are what really endeared him to Tech fans. Tapp was inducted into the Virginia Tech Sports Hall of Fame in 2018, but he was a hall of fame person long before then. Drafted in the second round of the 2006 NFL Draft by the Seattle Seahawks, Tapp spent parts or all of 12 seasons in the NFL with six different teams. In his eighth season as a professional, he played for the Washington Redskins. He played sparingly, and he thought he saw the end of his career coming—so he started to prepare for it. The NFL Players Association helps players transition to careers after football, and Tapp took advantage of the union’s resources. Though he played for another four seasons, he used his spare time to learn. He became certified to run a Crossfit business through a program that the NFL had in Washington, D.C. He worked an internship with the NFLPA. He attended a business entrepreneur school at Notre Dame—another training program provided by the NFL. “I was always one of these guys thinking, ‘OK, what’s the next move?’ That’s how I’ve always been,” Tapp said. “I understood that the NFL means ‘Not for Long.’ So in year 7 or 8, I was like, ‘OK, I need to start planning for what the next move is.’ I didn’t get a whole bunch of playing time [with the Redskins], and I thought, ‘This will probably be it.’ So I started doing internships and stuff through the NFLPA. They do an awesome job of getting players prepared for life after football, and then I just kept preparing for football. I was a guy—and I learned that from my parents—that never burned bridges.” Tapp spent the 2016 season and part of the 2017 season with the New Orleans Saints, who later released him. He landed in Tampa Bay for a couple of months, and when the Buccaneers released him, he was ready for the next phase in life. Fortunately, while in New Orleans, Tapp made an impression on head coach Sean Payton with his work ethic, attention to detail, discipline and unselfishness. With four games remaining in the 2017 season, he invited Tapp to rejoin the Saints staff in an advising/ consulting role, and he gave Tapp the freedom to express himself—his ideas and opinions—in staff meetings. The Saints general manager, Mickey Loomis, welcomed Tapp with open arms, too, and he even sought his opinion while searching for free agents. Not long thereafter, Tapp became hooked. He knew he wanted to get into coaching. “I caught the bug,” Tapp said, laughing. “I was all in. Coach Payton was awesome. He saw my desire to be a part of the game and gave me an opportunity to be there those last four games. I was fully in game planning and coaches meetings and helping on the field. That was my first bit of transition out of the game. He told me that was a huge thing because you see a lot of players struggle to find out what they really want to do because they had been in the game for so long. That got me hooked instantly.” The following season, Tapp applied for several assistant coaching positions, but nothing panned out because he lacked coaching experience. One of his former coaches in Detroit, John Bonamego, was the head coach at Central Michigan. He caught word that Tapp wanted to get into coaching, and he offered Tapp a job as a quality control coach. Quality control coaches have limited on-field coaching responsibilities, but help with game planning by analyzing game film and providing statistical support. Tapp spent the 2018 season at Central Michigan in Mount Pleasant, Michigan—and away from his wife and two kids, who have established a home base in Ashburn, Virginia. The team went 1-11, and the administration fired Bonamego after the season, but Tapp learned a lot. His NFL connections enabled him to land another job. His assistant special teams coach in Detroit, Devin Fitzsimmons, had moved to Vanderbilt as the special teams coach under head coach Derek Mason, and he convinced Mason to bring Tapp aboard as a quality control coach. Thus, Tapp received more training in the SEC. When the season ended, Tapp never expected to wind up in Blacksburg. But Fuente decided on a full staff shake-up on the defensive side of the ball, naming Hamilton the coordinator and relieving line coach Charley Wiles and cornerbacks coach Brian Mitchell of their duties. Hamilton then went to Fuente and suggested hiring his former teammate as a defensive line coach, and after doing his due diligence, Fuente agreed, pairing him with Bill Teerlinck, who gives Tapp a mentor of sorts based on Teerlinck’s eight years of NFL coaching experience. Hamilton’s push really wasn’t a surprise. As a redshirt freshman, Hamilton blocked a punt against Virginia, and Tapp, then a true freshman, returned it for a touchdown. The two were forever intertwined. “I was over the moon,” Tapp said when he got the offer. “I know what kind of guy Justin [Hamilton] is. I played with him. We turned from young boys to young men. We bled, sweat and worked together, and I saw the work he had put in. It was surprising [that Hamilton was named the defensive coordinator], but it wasn’t shocking because I know the caliber of guy that he is. So for Coach Fu to see that and give him the keys to the car is huge.” Football comes easily to Tapp, perhaps even naturally. He played every position on the defensive line during his NFL days, and having played for six different teams, he played in a variety of schemes and learned different techniques. He knows what works and what doesn’t. He continues to gain experience in recruiting. He spent much of the month of January getting a baptism on the intricacies of it, traveling around with Fuente, Hamilton, running backs coach Adam Lechtenberg and new cornerbacks coach Ryan Smith. They made several trips to the Tidewater area, where Tapp’s name still carries a lot of weight. Typical 28 Inside Hokie Sports