Houston, GT, Boise ST), his problem was consistence. My only point, going back to your original one that it’s easy for good defenses to defend Taysom, is that when it’s only Taysom they have to worry about yes. But perhaps some of Taysom’s throwing problems were because of the team around him and the fact that good teams could control his running wasn’t only because he couldn’t pass, it was the team (O-line, specifically) that struggled with passing. That 2013 o-line struggled even against average teams. Take a look at Houston. Taysom was sacked 8 times. Imagine a less mobile qb back there. This also doesn’t account for the effect of not having a consistence run threat, also caused by the poor O-line play.

If you put Sophomore Taysom on this year’s offense against those good teams, I think they win at least one of them, possibly two out of 4. They lost to Utah by 7, ND and Wisc by 10, and the only loss more than 10 of that group was Washington by 16. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that a vastly improved O-line would have impacted those games.

And I’m not counting Virginia. They were a JW catch (instead of int) away from winning even with the exact same team.