Hill providing thrills for BYU fans

If the the question from national college football commentator Tony Barnhart was unexpected, BYU quarterback Taysom Hill didn't let it faze him.

"What do you think about throwing your name in the Heisman Trophy (mix)?" Barnhart asked during Hill's Tuesday interview appearance on CBS Sports Network. "Are you a contender?"

Moments before, Barnhart referenced Hill's "coming-out party" against Texas, when the BYU sophomore accounted for almost 400 yards of total offense in leading the Cougars to a 40-21 win over the Longhorns. Hill's 259 rushing yards that night rank second all-time at BYU, and the team's 550 rush yards represented a BYU record and the most ever allowed by Texas in a single game.

"That's when people started kicking around your name for the Heisman Trophy," Barnhart noted.

If such talk has been making the rounds, it has been somewhat under the radar, as favorites Marcus Mariota (Oregon), Jameis Winston (Florida State), Johnny Manziel (Texas A&M) and A.J. McCarron (Alabama) grab the lion's share of headlines among quarterbacks. The next tier of Heisman-worthy signal callers extends to Ohio State's Braxton Miller, Baylor's Bryce Petty, Louisville's Teddy Bridgewater and Georgia's Aaron Murray, to name the most prominent would-be honorees.

Hill has certainly made some national waves with standout performances this season, but it would likely take a special November to really launch Hill into 2013's Heisman Trophy conversation.

BYU enters the month at 6-2, on a five-game win streak, knocking on the door of the Top 25, but facing three November road games, including contests at nationally-ranked Wisconsin and Notre Dame. The national platform provided by those two games in particular will expose BYU and Hill to critical--and potentially beneficial--inspection.

As for Barnhart's inquiry about Heisman contention, Hill answered confidently when he said "I feel like I have the talent, I have the ability and I have the guys around me on our team to do that."

"I don't worry about (the talk)," said Hill. "I don't worry about the stats. The only stat I think about is the win-loss column; that's what's important to me."

"I take care of what's on the field, but it's fun to be brought up and mentioned in that light."

If Hill is merely on the periphery of 2013's Heisman discussion, he should enter his junior season of 2014 as one of a number of players on the national-award front-burner.

"It's a great honor and great privilege to me," said Hill of current honors talk, "but I'm a sophomore. I've got a few more years to go, so we'll see what happens."

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Which brings about the question: where does Hill rank among the best quarterbacks in the game, right now?

Well, we could start with this: he is the only player in the Football Bowl Subdivision currently with 600-plus rushing yards (Hill has 841) and 2,000-plus passing yards (Hill has 2,019) this season.

Hill's total offense average of 357.5 yards/game ranks him ahead of every above-mentioned Heisman-candidate QB except for Manziel and Petty.

Hill is the only FBS QB currently ranked in the top 50 in both rushing yards/game (21st) and passing yards/game (33rd).

In short, he is the consummate dual-threat signal-caller.

"He is, and he has been, actually, since the very beginning of the season," says his head coach Bronco Mendenhall. "It's just unfortunate, some of the (im)patience of those who want to just look at one game or two and say 'he's this,' when they couldn't have been farther from the truth."

"He's an exceptional player, and one of the best quarterbacks, I think, in the country, as a sophomore, with two more years (and) five more games this season. I can't predict, nor can anyone, where his ceiling is; what is this going to look like over time?

"He's confident, he runs it well, he throws it well, and he's making really good decisions...and we're really lucky he's at BYU."

What about placing Hill in future Heisman conversations?

"I don't see any reason why that couldn't happen," Mendenhall said.

"What he wants to do is help this team play well. I love his focus, I love his leadership, his ability, but if you're just looking at the decisions he's making...he's right most of the time.

"For this stage of his career, that's a good sign. In the system that we have...(speaking) as a defensive coach, that's hard (to handle)."

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Hill's performance to this point in the season is reflected in two distinct phases: his first three games (at Virginia, v. Texas and v. Utah), and his last five (v. Middle Tennessee, at Utah State, v. Georgia Tech, at Houston and v. Boise State).

#hillthree_five

While Hill's rushing attempt numbers have remained relatively constant, with marginally diminished yardage returns, his passing performance has seen a dramatic improvement since the loss to Utah.

Hill is on a current run of four consecutive games with pass efficiency ratings of 150 or better; the last BYU QB with five such games was Ty Detmer, who rolled up nine straight games of 150+ in his senior season of 1991.

Even despite the sluggish start, Hill's stats through eight games rank him among the nation's best offensive players in multiple categories.

Hill has already placed himself among BYU's all-time top performers:

In only 14 games played, he is already the 33rd BYU player and fourth quarterback with 1,000-plus career rushing yards.

He trails only Virgil Carter and Eldon Fortie in career QB rushing yards (Fortie 1,624; Carter 1,225; Hill 1,177).

With 159 more rushing yards this season, he will be the first-ever BYU player with 1,000-plus rushing yards and 1,000-plus passing yards in the same season.

Once he reaches the 1,000-yard rushing plateau for the season, he will become the 22nd player in FBS history with 1,000-plus rushing yards and 2,000-plus passing yards in the same season (Hill has 2,019 passing yards at present).

With 159 more rushing yards and 981 more passing yards (would need to average 196.2 passing ypg until the end of the season), Hill would be only the seventh player in FBS history to rush for 1,000-plus yards and pass for 3,000-plus yards in the same season.

When he rushed for 128 yards and passed for 417 yards at Houston, he became only the ninth FBS player to do hit the 100/400 tallies in the same game:

#hill100_400

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Hill is only ten starts into his BYU career, but ten starts is a 'magic number' of sorts; it's when I start tracking QB win percentages.

It is true that more than one player contributes directly to wins and losses, but much as starting pitchers are credited with wins and losses, starting quarterbacks carry much the same kind of responsibility, with exceptions, of course.

As such, Hill's ten-game win rate already ranks him among BYU's most successful quarterbacks.

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Any way you look at it, Taysom Hill has already served notice: he is a unique and remarkable talent, the likes of which BYU may never have seen at quarterback.

His career is yet young, but he has already confronted significant challenges, including a season-ending injury and rehabilitation that shortened his preparation for a 2013 campaign in which he would be asked to learn and orchestrate a completely new offense.

A revolving cast of characters on the offensive line, in addition to up-and-down performances from some of BYU's most reliable playmakers also contributed to some halting steps at the beginning of the season. Now that experience and health have sharpened the teammates around him, and now that he has his feet under him in Robert Anae's up-tempo attack, Hill's potential is coming into sharper focus.

Whether he is to be considered for a future Heisman Trophy or a permanent place in BYU's impressive quarterback pantheon, Hill indeed looks the part of a contender.

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