Losing Taysom was completely deflating. There is no replacing him. He's the heart and soul of the team and means as much to the defense as he does the offense. He is one of those players that just has it. That it factor that makes everyone believe you can do anything and elevates your game because he will do everything to win. When he went down last year with that broken leg I can't even explain what that stadium was like. Combine that with losing our star running back for the season, a couple starting corners and numerous other players and it was a cluster. That team went into a tailspin and only recovered because of the soft November schedule.
This season is riding on Taysom. Every BYU fan will be holding his breath when he drops back and wincing whenever he gets hit.
I can understand how this would affect a team for sure, so I'm not dismissing the fact that it could have a poor effect on a team, but we had something similar happen in 2013 when Taylor Martinez went out, and we still scrambled our way to 9 wins with a freshman and a walk-on quarterback, against better competition.
Depth is definitely a place of distinction between our teams, but I would disagree with the assertion that our starting 22 and yours are on equal footing. I could go back and look at the 247 composite rankings for all 22 starters for each team, but that's too much work and I'm about 85% confident there would be a legitimate gap in perceived quality between the two teams.
