Trey
Taylor.
Trey
Taylor.
Air Force· 6'1"· 206 lb· 4.53s 40
"The first Jim Thorpe Award winner in Air Force history, and still a 223rd pick — that gap between the trophy and the slot is the whole evaluation of a service-academy safety."Pre-draft read
Taylor is a downhill free safety who played the deep middle, the post and the low hole for Air Force's option-heavy defense, and his identity is diagnosis. He reads the quarterback's shoulders from depth, triggers early on run action and arrives with real pop for 206 pounds, finishing 74 tackles as a senior without needing anyone to clean up.
The coverage half of the game is quieter but efficient: he allowed 18 catches on 31 targets in 2023 and turned three interceptions into 97 return yards and a score. He is a plus straight-line athlete — 4.53 at his pro day, 37.5-inch vertical — but is smoother than sudden in space. The signature is instinct plus finish, not range.
Single-high or two-deep zone system that lets him play the post and the low hole with clean run-pass keys, plus a heavy special-teams role; his value climbs in a defense that keeps safeties in space and lets them trigger downhill.
Year 1: fourth safety and four-phase special-teamer, roughly 200-300 kicking-game snaps with dime and big-nickel emergency reps. Ceiling: a 400-snap third safety who plays the deep middle in base and tackles at a starter level.
A man-heavy, match-quarters defense that asks safeties to travel with slot receivers and carry tight ends vertically; his hips and top-end recovery speed do not hold up when he has to cover a route rather than read a quarterback.
The Air Force service commitment shaped his market as much as the tape - teams had to price in a deferral request before spending a pick.
Trey Taylor | Safety | Air Force | 2023 Highlights | 2024 NFL Draft
Full Thorpe Award season reel showing the downhill triggers, the three interceptions and the tackling radius.
Trey Taylor - Best DB in College Football
Coverage-focused cutup from 2023, the season he allowed 18 catches on 31 targets.
Trey Taylor - Hard-Hitting Safety
Contact compilation illustrating the striking element that carried his evaluation as a late-round safety.
Taylor is a four-year Air Force starter, a Frisco, Texas three-star who spent two seasons on the developmental roster before starting 28 of the 36 games he played and leaving as the most decorated defensive back in academy history. He is a true free safety by alignment and a box-adjacent striker by temperament, the rare service-academy defender whose tape held up against Power Five offenses.
The production climbed every year: 62 tackles as a sophomore, 69 with 4.5 tackles for loss as a junior, then a senior season of 74 tackles, 5.0 tackles for loss, three interceptions, four breakups and a blocked kick that won him the 2023 Jim Thorpe Award over Cooper DeJean and Malaki Starks. He also won the Shrine Bowl's Pat Tillman Award. The flags were the ones service-academy prospects always carry: a defensive scheme built to stop the triple option, few reps against pro passing concepts, and a 23-year-old body with no projection left.
Boards had him as a Day 3 special-teams safety with backup range, and the military commitment question hung over the pick. Las Vegas took him at 223 for the character, the tackling and the kicking-game floor.
- 01
Diagnosis
reads run-pass keys from the post as fast as any safety in the class and is downhill before the back has cleared the mesh point.
- 02
Tackling
205 career stops with a low miss rate; he breaks down in space and finishes through the ball carrier rather than dragging him down.
- 03
Ball production
six career interceptions and 13 breakups, including three picks for 97 yards and a touchdown in his Thorpe Award season.
- 04
Testing floor
4.53 forty, 37.5-inch vertical, 6.90 three-cone and 22 bench reps at his pro day, all top-ten marks among 2024 combine safeties.
- 05
Character and special teams
Pat Tillman Award winner and a natural kick-coverage gunner, the exact profile that survives a 53-man roster.
- 01
Scheme translation
Air Force's defense was built to defeat the option, so he saw very few NFL passing concepts and had to relearn split-safety rules.
- 02
Range
smoother than sudden opening from the hash; he covers ground on a straight line but loses the sideline throw when he has to redirect late.
- 03
Man coverage
stiff turning out of the slot and grabby at the top of the route, which caps him as a zone-only defender in sub packages.
- 04
Age and frame
turned 23 before his rookie year at 206 pounds, with no developmental runway left and not enough mass to live in the box full time.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 4.53sp50
- Vertical
- 37.5inp50
- Broad jump
- 123inp50
- Three-cone
- 6.90sp50
- Shuttle
- 4.12sp50
- Bench
- 22repp50
| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | Air Force | 10 | 62 | 1 | 1 | 5 | 1 |
| 2022 | Air Force | 13 | 69 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 0 |
| 2023 | Air Force | 13 | 74 | 0.5 | 3 | 4 | 0 |
| Career | — | 36 | 205 | 2.5 | 6 | 13 | 1 |
Season splits verified against cfbstats official player pages. Taylor did not appear in a game in 2019 or 2020, so those years are omitted rather than logged as zero seasons; the three playing seasons sum exactly to the 36 games, 205 tackles, 11.0 TFL, 2.5 sacks and six interceptions Las Vegas listed at the draft. Fumble recoveries are unpublished and left blank rather than zero-filled. 2023 also included a blocked kick and 97 interception-return yards with one touchdown.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Late-round safety whose NFL role is core special teams and third-safety depth rather than defined defensive snaps.
Downhill striking safety whose diagnosis and tackling made him a starter faster than his coverage profile suggested.
Day 3 safety whose rookie injury cost him the developmental window and left him bouncing between rosters.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
The commitment question was answered quickly — Taylor received approval to defer his service obligation and reported to Las Vegas — but the football never got going. The Raiders placed him on injured reserve before the 2024 opener with a knee issue suffered in the preseason, and he missed the first eight weeks. Activated in November, he debuted against Pittsburgh and finished the year with 155 special-teams snaps and not a single defensive rep under Patrick Graham. The 2025 regime change made it harder: Pete Carroll and John Spytek waived him at cutdowns in August, brought him back on the practice squad, then released him from the practice squad days before the season opener. He entered 2026 unsigned, with one NFL season, zero defensive snaps and zero career defensive statistics.
In hindsight the pick was reasonable and the outcome was ordinary. Nobody drafted the Thorpe Award at 223 expecting a starter; they were buying a tackler with elite character who could cover kicks while learning a pro coverage system. The rookie-year IR stint cost him the one thing a player like this cannot lose — reps in front of the staff that drafted him — and by the time he was healthy there was a new front office with no attachment to him.
Data note: Season splits verified against cfbstats official player pages. Taylor did not appear in a game in 2019 or 2020, so those years are omitted rather than logged as zero seasons; the three playing seasons sum exactly to the 36 games, 205 tackles, 11.0 TFL, 2.5 sacks and six interceptions Las Vegas listed at the draft. Fumble recoveries are unpublished and left blank rather than zero-filled. 2023 also included a blocked kick and 97 interception-return yards with one touchdown.