Depends on what offense you're running. A "good" qb is totally dependent on just that. Dan Marino/T. Brady/etc would be sh*t on TO's offense. Or Georgia Tech's offense. Frost, Crouch or Frazier would be sh*t for Texas Tech's offense and so on.....
That's the problem. Taylor doesn't really fit any particular system, because his skillset isn't ideally suited for being a quarterback. That's why I think the comparisons to Frazier, Crouch, et al. are so off-base.
Really? I see extremely close comparisons. Frazier & Crouch were superb weapons with their feet and "very" marginal passers. What else could describe Tmart more accurately? I think the two main differences are....
1. With SW (especially) & even Beck so far we're not a "run first" offense (at all). TO's & Frank's offense fitted their qbs talents perfectly. Not even close so far with Tmart.
2. The difference in functional talent between Frazier's Oline and Tmart's Oline is so big I don't even have words for it. Maybe, a "different galaxy" would be appropriate? I don't know.....but you understand. Crouch's Oline wasn't 30% as good as Frazier's but was still vastly better than what Tmart has had. It's not easy to create a real-deal pipeline but I keep hoping we will again. Last year's recruiting helps a lot and I hope it continues.
I do agree that if anything, T-Mart's a run-first QB. The times I've seen Taylor at his best are the times when the zone read's working to perfection, but unfortunately thus far that's been against lesser defensive talent. Taylor's best asset (aside from all-out speed) is his ability to sell the fake on the read, but he still has to have a lot of room to run. When it comes to triple option, Frazier was way ahead of where Martinez is now. That makes sense because the triple option was Nebraska's bread and butter back then, we knew it, and by the time Tommie graduated he could've made the reads and the pitches in his sleep. Taylor obviously doesn't have that kind of instinct when it comes to triple option yet, but of course he needs it if we can expect to have any success at all running it, and I'm not sure how hard they're working on it in practice. What I've noticed is that he has a tendency to hesitate a bit too much when he's making the decision to pitch or keep, and he either loses too much time or gets out of sync with the pitch man. Probably something that can be fixed with experience and time, but the question is, how much time will it take?
I hope that Beck can work something out with Martinez and find something that at least works better than making him drop back and pass it 15 times in a row. I don't want to be proven right when I say that I don't think Taylor has the skillset of a quarterback that can help Nebraska win big games. I'm all for whatever offensive identity the team can find that'll help it get back on track, whether it's smash mouth, air raid, fun 'n' gun, west coast, whatever. While I agree that Taylor's abilities relegate us to needing a run-first mentality, even a run-first mentality has to have a pass-second counterpart. The $64,000 question is, can Taylor improve enough as a passer to at least not make us quite so nervous on obvious passing situations?
