Jawaan Taylor's Fit for Bears as Pass Blocker

The Jacksonville Jaguars free agent tackle has been in the top half of the league's tackles as a pass blocker but run blocking has been another story.
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If the Bears are looking for a lower-cost tackle option with promise it could lead them to Jacksonville's Jawaan Taylor.

The Bears are in need of a right tackle and Taylor has played there with varying degrees of success after being drafted out of Florida in the second round in 2019.

Taylor has ideal size for a tackle in this Bears offensive system at 6-foot-5, 312 pounds. He is coming off his best year as a pass blocker, according to Pro Football Focus grades. The analytics website gave him a 75.9 pass blocking grade, which ranked 30th among 81 tackles who were graded.

It came in a year when he was dealing with great personal tragedy -- the death in January of 2022 of his father, Rev. Robert Taylor

Last year Taylor allowed only five sacks last year and had seven penalties. Over the course of his four-year career, PFF has him at 28 sacks allowed and 154 pressures with 39 penalties. He has been a steady pass blocker with only one PFF grade in the 50s protecting the passer for four years. He was said to have allowed pressures on only 2.5% of pass plays, third-best in the league.

PFF does acknowledge his pass-blocking grade is helped by the quick release QB Trevor Lawrence has.

Struggles at Run-Blocking

While these are all nice numbers, Taylor has been less than effective the past two years as a run blocker, according to PFF grades.

Last season Taylor had the worst grade given out by PFF to a tackle for run blocking at 39.7. He was the only tackle in the league with a grade below 40 and it was based on the highest number of what PFF considered negatively graded run blocks (22.4%). 

The previous season his run-blocking grade wasn't much better at 42.8 and that can't be a good sign for working in a Bears offense based on the run.

At age 25, he's in an age range where the Bears could work with him on his run blocking to help him develop, but he's coming from a team that isn't based on the wide-zone blocking scheme. In fact, that's one of his strengths in this signing period as he's one of the younger offensive linemen.

Possibly the best aspect of Taylor's play to date has been his availability. He has never missed an NFL game with 66 starts for four seasons.

He has really never been out of the northeast Florida area as he played high school ball there, then for the Gators before being drafted by the Jaguars. The Jaguars were reportedly making last-ditch efforts to try to retain him

Projection in Free Agency

PFF calls him the third best offensive lineman available and projects a cost of $17 million a year, while Spotrac.com says $14 million a year on a new contract.

Only Orlando Brown and Mike McGlinchey are regarded as better offensive line free agents by PFF.

It's well known McGlinchey won't be back with San Francisco but Brown's situation is less certain. Kansas City is going to reportedly attempt to talk again with his agent before the start of free agency, but he will not be tagged. The Chiefs would have salary cap concerns if they signed Brown and would need to get to work restructuring some deals to find cap space.

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Gene Chamberlain
GENE CHAMBERLAIN

BearDigest.com publisher Gene Chamberlain has covered the Chicago Bears full time as a beat writer since 1994 and prior to this on a part-time basis for 10 years. He covered the Bears as a beat writer for Suburban Chicago Newspapers, the Daily Southtown, Copley News Service and has been a contributor for the Daily Herald, the Associated Press, Bear Report, CBS Sports.com and The Sporting News. He also has worked a prep sports writer for Tribune Newspapers and Sun-Times newspapers.