Those of you fortunate enough to catch the San Francisco 49ers’ first series against the Houston Texans on Sunday were treated to Jimmy Garoppolo doing the most Jimmy Garoppolo things ever. By that we mean moving the offense down the field and capping it off with a nice touchdown pass to Trent Taylor.
Yeah, remember him? Taylor was sidelined with back surgery and slowly coming back to form at camp. He was inactive against the Dallas Cowboys in Week 1 of the preseason and made his return Saturday.
The touchdown he scored was ridiculous. After the game, he admitted he was the last read of the play:
“I was one of the last reads on the play, so I was kinda running in the endzone like, ‘Please throw me the ball, please throw me the ball.’ And then luckily he found me so it worked out.”
So Trent Taylor is back right? 100 percent? Well, not so much. In fact, he has a bit to go. Kyle Shanahan was asked about it in his postgame press conference, and had this to say:
“Not totally yet. This was his first week getting to go, similar to Garnett, but he definitely made some progress this week to where we felt good to playing him. I thought he did a decent job out there. I think he’s still working through it. I think he’s real close, but anytime you deal with the back and stuff it takes some time to get those reps and all your power and coordination back.”
It was a pretty clean catch, all things considered. Taylor did in fact have another catch from Garoppolo in traffic on 3rd and 4 during the second series. Taylor got it but was balled up and brought down. I doubt being at full strength would have changed the outcome of the play given the defender was nearly attached to him.
In any case, back surgery is nothing to mess with. It looks like Taylor is getting back to form. In his post game chat had some words for how he felt. If this is how he is not at 100 percent, he’s only going to get better. Especially on third downs:
“I can kind of day by day feel my legs starting to get stronger and getting my legs back under me. Always good to feel improvement as you work. I still got a little ways to go, definitely felt great being out there tonight and have my first catch as a TD. Nothing to complain about there. “