San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Trent Taylor caught an impressive 15 passes from 15 targets on slant routes during his rookie campaign. How impressive is that metric? It led all NFL wide receivers in 2017. In fact, Pro Football Focus gave Taylor a wide receiver rating of 141.0 on slant routes. The next closest receiver was Keenan Allen of the Los Angeles Chargers at 124.1.
As a comparison, four-time first-team All-Pro receiver Antonio Brown of the Pittsburgh Steelers had a 112.7 wide receiver rating on slant routes in 2017, catching 16 of his 20 targets and ranking fifth on the list. Brown had the second-highest catch percentage on slant routes, behind only Taylor.
Mark Chichester of Pro Football Focus wrote the following of Taylor:
"The rising receiver performed historically well on slant routes in 2017 and ended the season with 15 catches from 15 targets for 189 yards and one touchdown, resulting in a WR rating of 141.0. Since we started tracking the route data for every player on every play of every game, he is the only receiver with at least 15 targets in a regular season to field a perfect catch rate, the only receiver to grade positively on at least 85.0 percent of his targets and he's the only receiver to convert over 80.0 percent of his targets to either a first down or a touchdown. That's pretty good."
Taylor had minor back surgery this offseason, which forced him to miss the majority of organized team activities in May and the 49ers' June minicamp. However, he is expected to be ready for training camp – if not from the start, at least a week or two in, according to head coach Kyle Shanahan.
"He had some back issues that were bothering him this offseason," Shanahan said in June. "We were patient with it. It was still bothering him right before OTAs, so we went in and cleaned some things up. He'll be good to go by training camp."
The 49ers made Taylor a fifth-round draft pick out of Louisiana Tech last year. During his rookie season, he registered 43 receptions for 430 yards with two touchdowns.
H/t to Patrick Tulini for the find.
