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Stop stereotyping Jonathan Taylor and start talking about him as a Heisman Trophy candidate
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I know. I know. I know.
He’s just another Wisconsin running back. You’ve seen this movie before. A Badger tailback goes off behind that big, dominant offensive line. La ti da. Yawn. With every big run Jonathan Taylor rips off, you can almost hear the 45-year-old men saying it to their TVs.
“I can run for a buck fifty behind that Wisconsin offensive line.”
I get it. It’s been done before. It’ll be done again. Wisconsin is doing typical Wisconsin things and nobody is surprised.
But let’s all stop devaluing Taylor’s season. Saturday was just another example of why the Badger back belongs in the Heisman Trophy conversation.
While the world was picking apart Wisconsin for not winning at Indiana by 50 points — even though it beat IU by the exact same margin (28) as Ohio State — Taylor was quietly putting the game out of reach, one big run at a time.
He finished the game with 183 rushing yards, which marked the sixth time he finished with 125-plus rushing yards this season. Just for a little perspective, that’s one fewer than Stanford standout Bryce Love. Heisman Trophy favorite Saquon Barkley only has two such games all season.
ESPN play-by-play man Dave Pasch said on the broadcast that the gap between Barkley and Taylor, a true freshman, is not very big. Sure, the gap between their offensive lines is about as big as the distance from Madison to State College.
But let’s stop using that to justify Taylor’s incredible season.
We’re a long way past the “Taylor is having quite the season for a freshman” narrative. Taylor is having quite the season for a human.
After Saturday’s dominance against Indiana, Taylor is up to 1,368 rushing yards on the season. That was after he came into Bloomington as the sixth-leading rusher in FBS. Tom Allen and the Hoosiers’ better-than-average run defense knew that. Lord knows they knew Taylor was going to touch the ball at least 25 times a game.
Did that matter? No. Of course not.
It also didn’t matter that Wisconsin fell behind 10-0 and the entire college football world was dismissing the Badgers as College Football Playoff contenders. Just like they did when things got tight against Nebraska, it was still going to be the Taylor show. Eight guys in the box? No worries.
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That’s the most underrated thing that Taylor has done this year. Teams are trying to make Alex Hornibrook beat them. It still doesn’t matter. Wisconsin has been able to impose its will with the ground game, even though it’s predictable.
You know who else does that? Alabama. Two years ago, the Tide fed Derrick Henry all the work he could handle. By season’s end, Henry led the nation with 395 rushing attempts and 2,219 rushing yards. By the time Henry earned the Heisman Trophy, he had 1,986 rushing yards for 12-1 Alabama.
Picture this scenario. In case you forgot, Taylor plays for an undefeated team. With Wisconsin set to represent the B1G West in the conference title game, he’ll get to play four more games before the Heisman voting. Taylor, who averages 152 rushing yards per game, is on pace for 1,976 yards.
Yes, that would be 10 yards less than Henry’s Heisman total.
Did Henry run behind a dominant offensive line, too? Absolutely. Did he face better defenses than Taylor? Of course.
But keep in mind that while Wisconsin’s strength of schedule hasn’t been good yet, Taylor still has a matchup in two weeks with Michigan (No. 8 in run defense) and in the B1G Championship, he’ll go against either Ohio State (No. 10 in run defense), Penn State (No. 26 in run defense) or Michigan State (No. 4 in run defense).
Taylor will have a chance to have his “Heisman moment.” In a year in which neither Barkley nor Love has truly run away with it like Lamar Jackson did last year, what’s to say Taylor won’t wind up with the most impressive numbers of the bunch? He’s already within striking distance.
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At Wisconsin, it’s not easy to look elite as a running back. After all, Melvin Gordon had the second-best single season rushing total in college football HISTORY in 2014, yet it wasn’t enough to beat out Marcus Mariota for the Heisman. Perhaps Gordon struggled to break the Wisconsin running back stereotype because Ron Dayne won the honor in 1999.
But Taylor deserves to be judged based on what he’s doing in 2017, not on what other Badger backs did before him.
If we’re talking about the best player in college football, surely the most productive player (by a long shot) of an undefeated Power 5 team needs to be in the Heisman conversation this late in the season. Taylor’s Heisman odds should continue to increase as Wisconsin racks up the wins.
Perhaps Taylor’s odds increased by those listening to the broadcast. Pasch made plenty of references to Taylor’s Heisman possibilities. His partner in crime, Greg McEloy, said it even better.
“By the time it’s said and done, I wouldn’t be surprised if Jonathan Taylor had a Heisman on his mantle…,” McElroy said.
Don’t be surprised if it happens sooner than you think.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Tradition. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.