Chicago Bears punter Tory Taylor was named the NFC Special Teams Player of the Week, the NFL announced on Wednesday.
Taylor was superb on Sunday in the Bears victory over the Los Angeles Rams at Soldier Field, totaling five punts with an average of 55.4 yards (48.0 net), with three of the five punts landing inside the 10-yard line.
Tory Taylor Named NFC Special Teams Player of the Week
In my instant player grades, I said that Taylor’s performance was the best single-game performance I’ve ever seen by a Chicago Bears punter. It turns out I wasn’t wrong. According to the Chicago Sun-Times’ Patrick Finley, Taylor was one appropriately short punt from breaking a franchise record for the highest average yards per punt in a game.
Before his gorgeous 35-yard punt that pinned the Los Angeles Rams at their 8-yard line with 1:03 to play on Sunday, Taylor was averaging 60.5 yards per punt, which would have been a Bears record that has stood since at least 1960.
It’s Taylor’s first career weekly honor and the first for a Chicago Bears punter since Brad Maynard in Week 16 in 2007. Taylor and Maynard are the only two Bears punters ever to receive the honor.
According to the NFL, this marks the third consecutive year in which a rookie punter has won a Special Teams Player of the Week award, as Taylor joins Ethan Evans (Week 11, 2023), Ryan Stonehouse (Week 10, 2022), Jake Camarda (Week 9, 2022), and Ryan Wright (Week 6, 2022).