Turnaround Was Simply Taylor-Made : 49ers: John Taylor receives credit for igniting San Francisco’s comeback.

John Taylor dodged, danced and eluded his pursuers with ease Monday--and that was after the 27-year-old wide receiver’s 11-catch, 286-yard performance in the 49ers’ 30-27 victory over the Rams.

Like the Ram defense, reporters found Taylor nearly impossible to catch after his team-record spree. His 286 yards exceeded the previous San Francisco record of 241 yards, set in 1985 by Jerry Rice.

“He just lets his performance speak for itself,” 49er split end Mike Wilson said of Taylor, his road roommate. “He might celebrate a little on the plane home. He’s still trying to prove himself as an individual player and he proved a lot tonight.”

He proved that opponents can’t ignore him and double-cover Rice, his more celebrated teammate. Entering the game, Taylor had 47 receptions for 761 yards, an average of 16.2 per catch. Rice was by far the statistical leader with 70 catches for 1,298 yards, an average of 18.5. Taylor eclipsed Rice last night, but Rice--who had five catches for only 38 yards--even helped him with a key block on Taylor’s electrifying 92-yard touchdown run in the first half.

Taylor dashed to the outside of Anthony Newman to clear his first hurdle and stutter-stepped past Jerry Gray to put himself in the clear and the 49ers back in the game, cutting the Ram lead to 14-10.

“A lot of people think a good wide receiver such as Jerry is just a good receiver,” Taylor said. “But both of us just love to block, too . . . . I was just trying to get the least punishment possible. I just caught the ball and I was trying to go to daylight. I was fortunate to find it.”

Rice saw Taylor’s spree as more skillful than lucky.

“He really ran the ball well,” Rice said. “They were trying to cover him one-on-one and John was able to capitalize on it. You can’t cover him one-on-one. They were rolling to my side and one man was coming up trying to cover me, and that leaves him one-on-one. I’ve been working on my blocking all week long, so that helped.”

Taylor, in his third year out of Delaware State, had only four regular-season touchdowns in 1988 but all were runs of 65 yards or more. Such statistics mean nothing to him.

“He didn’t know how many yards he had tonight,” Wilson said. “I told him, ‘J. T., you had almost 300 yards,’ and he said, ‘Really?’ ”

Really.

“I came into the game hoping that we’d all have a big game because if we won, we’d sew up the division and the conference and we could go from there,” Taylor said. “Getting the record feels good, but if we hadn’t won it wouldn’t have made a difference.”

The 49er win was due in no small part to his second TD run, a 95-yard sprint up the sideline that sliced the Ram lead to 27-23 with 8:33 to play. The crowd at Anaheim Stadium and the Rams themselves seemed to sag, but Taylor didn’t allow himself to exult.

“I tried not to think about it,” he said. “We were still losing after that. We just wanted to try and keep pushing forward. We have to keep pushing forward after this because we’ve still got a few more games to play.”

The most emotion he allowed himself was acknowledging that Monday’s victory over the Rams was satisfying.

“The last three times we played the Rams, including in Tokyo, they beat us and we figured they had our number,” Taylor said. “Winning this game was especially important to let them know, ‘Hey, we’re playing good football.’ ”