Now that he was accepted and knew where he wanted to go, he turned his attention back to the team. The Bears have had a change of coach over the past few months.
“When I came to Brown I went back to Marcus and at that time he put me in touch with Coach Perry,” Targoff said. “I took the train upstairs in March and met with Coach Perry and joined the team as a walk-on. When I came on campus in the fall, not many people knew I was a day leaver.”
Not having played fully organized football initially presented some unexpected challenges.
“Learning the playbook was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do,” Targoff said. “In those two games (with the 21U Lions), the quarterback came into the huddle and said to us, ‘You do this and you do that.’ It was harder than any test I’ve ever had to study for. I’ve never seen real coaches yell at you, but by the end of camp it all just clicked.”
Targoff started out as a freshman on the Scout team in 2019 and has since worked his way into bigger and bigger roles. He appeared in one game as a freshman before wearing himself out through the 2020 season canceled by the pandemic. As a junior last season, he appeared in all 10 games and caught 13 passes for 152 yards, including two receptions for 40 yards in the season opener against URI. Two weeks later, he scored his first career touchdown in a 29-point quarter at Bryant.
“I had a lot of fun playing Boy Scouts my freshman year,” Targoff said. “I didn’t know if it would work out, but I knew I didn’t want to play tennis because it’s torture. It’s getting lonely out there and it’s a mental war. I also wanted to hit people.”
The Spring Ball in 2021 offered a chance to rise alongside his fellow receivers as the group managed their own subs and had a little more responsibility for themselves due to a change of position in training. Targoff cites his peers Hayes Sutton, Wes Rockett, Allan Houston III and Graham Walker as a very close-knit group who have helped each other develop over the past three-plus years.
“I was here with them on the first day,” he said. “I would say we are very close. They’re all great guys and it’s a really close-knit group. I think especially with the receiver-coach change, that’s forced us to be leaders and control ourselves. It’s been a long journey and we’ve been through it all together.”
With an unconventional run-up to becoming a student athlete at Brown and an unexpected season cancellation due to COVID in 2020, Targoff has one big thing on his mind as his senior season is now in full swing.
“I’m playing and I just want to win.”
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