Taysom for a wider and deeper range of reasons. From my personal viewpoint, he's had to dig deeper and overcome substantially more than Zach has to date. Zach has had some injuries to overcome, for sure, but he's had a pretty comfortable upbringing, and it appears all he's focused on through life is sports, with the full support of his family.
Taysom served an honorable mission in spite of P5 offers and a chance to play for Harbaugh. While giving us those iconic wins over Texas and and other memorable wins, he also had some heartbreaking losses (no need to name them). And then there's those string of injuries.. A knee, a broken leg, a lisfranc injury, and a broken elbow. He picked himself up and came back every. single. time. If we're honest, we wonder if individually we'd have the heart and chutzpah to come back the way he did, so he captured our imagination.
The lockeroom scene after that first Nebraska game was one of the most gut wrenching ones I've ever witnessed in sports. The guy has a legit Heisman shot, looks stellar in the first half, and then his injury happens. What else could go wrong? Well, his big brother who he idolized growing up dies, so he changes his number to honor and remember him.
He lays it all on the line as an UDFA and becomes the talk of the NFL as a pure football player. Sculpts himself physically and plays with passion. He'll probably never be a pro bowl QB, but rather than bag on his limitations, several of us are intrigued and entranced how far he'll go with his high-risk style of play, so we watch, and we collectively hold our breath, knowing his NFL career could end in an instant. He's a got a nice wife and started a family. He represents our faith and BYU (and a SE Idaho guy like several of us). So yeah, we cheer for him, and I guess we're somewhat emotionally invested in him... guilty. I personally can't think of many other athletes that give me more reasons to cheer for them.