"Old Taylor" back?

[bshirt]

Call me crazy, but I think T-Mart is going to be fine. A couple of things:

 

1) If there was a game to play T-Mart in between Iowa State and Kansas, it would have been Iowa State. Yet Taylor was totally out of the equation for Iowa State and played against KU.

 

2) You don't go from "can't play at all" to "taking every snap" in a 7-day period with an ankle injury unless it wasn't that severe to begin with.

 

3) You don't go from "50%" in one half to "75%" based solely on injury improvement alone.'

 

What's my point? I think Taylor was probably ~70% when the Iowa State game rolled around and Pelini made the decision to give him a rest and let Cody Green start. For the most part, the gamble paid off. Remember, with Martinez on the bench, we went up 24-10 in the fourth quarter. The game shifted too quickly for anyone to predict. Iowa State gets a touchdown with ~9:00 left to go 24-17, but Pelini was probably thinking, "No big deal. We'll put together a long drive to burn time off. Our D will get a stop, then will run out the clock and go home 24-17." Paul fumbles and it's 24-24 in a flash. So why not put Martinez in at that point? Because he was cold and nicked up and throwing him in the game wouldn't have been much better (if not worse) than staying with Green. Fortunately, we dodged a bullet.

 

By the time the Kansas game rolled around, I think Martinez could have gone all out if necessary. But everything about the way we played screamed, "Scrimmage." Why else did we continue to throw on our game-ending drive as if in a two-minute offense? We ran through a lot of different looks that game, including the Wildcat. It seemed to me that Watson was taking it as an opportunity for Martinez to drill his passing and connect with the receivers. Martinez didn't run very often at all and still got 71 yards. Point being, when he needed to drop the hammer, he did. Any lack of production by Martinez was due to scheming, not his inability.

 

Let me close with this: Bo is well known for being deceptive about injuries, but he doesn't do it to annoy the fans. Far from it. He is clearly trying to confuse our opponents and knows that he won't be able to do that unless he keeps things obscure for EVERYONE. It's like the government and the CIA: it's in our own best interest that we don't know the full story. If you accept that, then do you think it's possible that Bo wanted A&M to suspect that Martinez may be wounded and come into the game a little unprepared for a fully healthy team? To me, everything we did in the Kansas game was preparation for A&M, including Pelini not wanting to show A&M how healthy Martinez is.

 

71 yards is just enough to let Martinez work through the gears but without letting on that he is tip top. I think he's going to be fine.

 

 

 

Very nice post Hujan. It's impossible to get a real reading on Tmart's injury but your take is as good as I've heard. If you're right we'll be in good shape as the Aggies, while a good team, don't "really" have any idea how explosive NU is with a close to fully functional Tmart.

 

The only exception to that is the Texas game where we dropped passes all game long and the bizarre SDSU game that looks all the world like we were just flat as pancake. It's gonna be fun!