Jason
Taylor II.
Jason
Taylor II.
Oklahoma St.· 5'12"· 204 lb· 4.50s 40
"A ball-hawking Big 12 safety whose instincts and 43-inch pop keep him in the conversation, but whose 4.50 speed means he has to make his money in the box and on four special-teams units."Pre-draft read
Taylor II is a downhill, run-alley safety whose value rests on volume and instincts, not length or speed. Oklahoma State played him as the deep-middle organizer who was allowed to trigger early, and he answered with 99 tackles and six interceptions as a redshirt senior. He reads the quarterback's front shoulder from depth and finishes tackles with a low wrap that limits yards after contact.
The traits are more competitive than explosive. He descends into the box on run downs, takes on pulling guards rather than side-stepping them, and shows real range on crossers when the throw is telegraphed. Against layered play-action and vertical stems, though, he plays a beat late out of his backpedal and recovers with grabby hands, not burst.
Split-safety structure that keeps him at 8-12 yards with run-first responsibility, letting him drive downhill on the quarterback's eyes instead of covering half the field alone.
Year 1: fourth safety and four-phase special-teamer. Ceiling: dime-package box defender and spot starter in two-high looks.
Single-high Cover-3 that asks him to carry the deep middle against vertical speed, where his 4.50 long speed is exposed on the first bad step.
His value climbs the closer he plays to the line of scrimmage.
A five-year Cowboy who redshirted in 2018 and lived on special teams as a redshirt freshman, Taylor II only became a starter when Tre Sterling went down a game into 2021. He never handed the job back. Two seasons of starter reps produced 147 tackles and eight interceptions, and the 2022 tape shows a defender whose value is stacked in the middle eight yards of the field: run fits, curl-flat robbing, and short-motor decisions made before the receiver breaks.
The ball production is real but context matters. Oklahoma State asked him to sit in zone and read the quarterback, and Big 12 offenses obliged with high-volume passing. He tied for the conference lead with six picks in 2022 and took two off Texas in a single afternoon. He also gave up his share of intermediate completions when he guessed early, and his tackle number is partly a function of a defense that lived on its heels.
Testing at 5-11 5/8 and 204 pounds cleaned up part of the profile — a 43-inch vertical and a 7.16 three-cone are legitimate marks — but the 4.50 forty is a real ceiling on how much single-high responsibility he can carry. He grades as a late-round strong safety and core special-teamer whose path to snaps runs through nickel-dime packages, not through winning a two-high job outright.
- 01
Ball production
Tied for the Big 12 lead with six interceptions in 2022, including two against Texas, reading the quarterback from depth rather than trailing the route.
- 02
Run-alley trigger
Descends from depth without hesitation and takes on blockers square, which is why he stacked 99 tackles as the last line of the Oklahoma State defense.
- 03
Tackling reliability
Plays low into contact and wraps through the hip, a technique that shows up on open-field fits against slot receivers and perimeter runs.
- 04
Explosive lower half
A 43-inch vertical and a 10-foot-9 broad jump confirm the jump-ball athleticism that shows on his interception tape at the catch point.
- 05
Program durability
Started the last two full seasons and appeared in 38 games from 2020 to 2022, missing almost nothing while carrying communication duties in the back end.
- 01
Long speed
A 4.50 forty caps how much single-high field he can honestly cover, and vertical stems from a plus slot force him to open early and hope.
- 02
Anticipation vs play-action
Layered concepts freeze his feet, and the beat he loses out of the backpedal turns catchable throws into completions behind him.
- 03
Length limitations
Sub-32-inch arms and a 5-11 frame cost him contested-catch reps he otherwise wins with timing and leverage at the top of the route.
- 04
Grabby recovery
When he guesses wrong he leans on his hands late in the route, a habit that draws flags at the NFL level far more often than it did in the Big 12.
Relative Athletic Score (Kent Lee Platte) benchmarks combine/pro-day numbers against every measured prospect at the position since 1987. 10.00 is elite; 5.00 is average.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 4.50sp50
- Vertical
- 43inp50
- Broad jump
- 129inp50
- Three-cone
- 7.16sp50
- Shuttle
- 4.20sp50
- Bench
- 14repp50
| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Oklahoma State | 11 | 12 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2021 | Oklahoma State | 14 | 48 | 2.5 | 2 | 4 | 1 |
| 2022 | Oklahoma State | 13 | 99 | 0 | 6 | 7 | 0 |
| Career | — | 38 | 159 | 2.5 | 8 | 0 | 0 |
cfbstats coverage begins in 2020. Taylor played three games as a true freshman in 2018 before redshirting and was a special-teams player in 2019; no verified defensive splits are published for those seasons, so they are omitted rather than zero-filled. 2020 pass-breakup and sack splits are not listed by cfbstats and are left blank.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Honors
- Second-team Walter Camp All-American (2022)
- First-team All-Big 12 (2022)
- Jim Thorpe Award semifinalist (2022)
- Honorable mention All-Big 12 (2021)
Instinctive strong safety who bounced between rosters as a package defender and special-teams contributor.
Undersized safety who carved out a long starting career on downhill physicality and dependable box tackling.
Productive college ball-hawk whose speed and length limits kept him from holding an NFL job.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Selected 234th overall by the Rams in 2023, placed on injured reserve in September and activated in late November. He appeared in eight games with no starts and five solo tackles. Waived in August 2024, he passed through the Rams and Cardinals practice squads, signed a Chiefs futures deal that ended in May 2025, was drafted by the UFL Orlando Storm in 2026 and was waived by Detroit at final cuts in August 2026.
The projection here was never about traits; it was about whether a productive, instinct-driven college safety with average length and speed could hold up when the field shrinks and the throws get faster. Every part of his 2022 season argued yes on toughness and no on margin for error. He was a semifinalist for the Thorpe Award, a first-team All-Big 12 pick and a second-team Walter Camp All-American, and he did that while playing on a defense that gave up a lot of grass. When the scheme let him play forward, he was the best version of himself — fast trigger, physical fits, clean tackling in space.
The NFL asked him to prove it on a smaller sample and he never got a stable one. The Rams took him at 234, put him on injured reserve in September of his rookie year and activated him in late November; he finished with eight games and five tackles, all solo, without a start. Practice-squad stops in Los Angeles and Arizona followed, then a Chiefs futures deal that ended in May, a UFL stint in Orlando, and a Detroit camp look that ended in the final cutdown. It is the standard seventh-round arc: enough traits to keep getting a jersey, not enough separation to keep one.
Data note: Stats verified against cfbstats 2020-2022 and Oklahoma State bio; NFL transactions verified against team releases. No individual film reel passed oEmbed validation - only press-conference interviews were found, so film_clips is empty.