Whether he’s wearing a cast on his hand or an injury pinny in practice, safety Michael Taaffe makes a massive difference for the Texas football defense.
Don’t believe it? Watch a replay of the Longhorns’ thrilling 45-38 overtime win last week against Mississippi State, when Texas gave up season highs of 382 passing yards and 445 total yards to journeyman Bulldogs quarterback Blake Shapen. Taaffe missed the game after undergoing surgery on a broken thumb suffered in an Oct. 18 win over Kentucky.
That’s why Taaffe’s progression toward playing Saturday against No. 9 Vanderbilt seems like such good news for No. 20 Texas. Taaffe returned to practice this week, according to head coach Steve Sarkisian, and remains questionable on the latest injury report released by Texas.
“Naturally, when you don’t have a player of Michael’s caliber, you’re going to miss him,” Sarkisian said Wednesday during his weekly media call with the other SEC coaches. “You’re going to miss the communication. You’re going to miss the play-making ability. You’re going to miss his ability to fix issues in real time as they’re happening on the field and not have to wait to get to the bench to fix it.”
On Thursday, Sarkisian went into more detail about what Taaffe means to the defense — and why the return of the defense’s No. 16 could matter as much as that of the other No. 16 in quarterback Arch Manning, who remains questionable in concussion protocol.
Sarkisian says “there’s a quiet confidence” in Taaffe that trickles throughout the entire defense.
Quiet? Really? Is that an apt description of a fifth-year senior who’s not afraid to give his opinion on anything regarding his team during a press conference?
“I don’t know if necessarily ‘quiet’ is the right word, but there’s a confidence that Michael Taaffe provides when he’s on the field,” Sarkisian said. “I don’t know that schematically we could have done anything different (against Mississippi State). It wasn’t like we were blowing coverages and things. But I do think there’s a sense of confidence that he can provide to the guys around him.”
Texas will need to match the confidence of a red-hot Vanderbilt squad that’s on its best run since it won a handful of Southern Conference titles in the 1920s. No one plays with more swagger than Commodores quarterback Diego Pavia, a dual threat on the short list of Heisman Trophy candidates who has 1,698 yards and 15 touchdowns passing and leads Vanderbilt with 458 yards rushing.
His ability to threaten a defense in multiple ways tests a defense mentally as much as physically; a blown assignment on a triple option could lead to a first down, and a lapse in coverage discipline on a broken play may mean a touchdown pass on a quarterback scramble.
Sarkisian praised redshirt freshman Xavier Filsaime and some other young players for handling safety duties in Taaffe’s absence. But no other safety on the squad can match Taaffe’s ability to diagnose Pavia’s plans, whether Taaffe plays with a club on his hand or not.
“How are you going to account for the quarterback?” Sarkisian said. “How are you going to account for the designed quarterback runs to make sure you have enough hats to fit the design? Do you have enough people to defend the triple option? Then you have to make sure that if they do throw the ball, that you have the ability to defend the ad-lib place. And when (Pavia) starts to scramble and move out of the pocket, it’s not always to run.
“Really disciplined eye control, really disciplined in our zone drops, really disciplined in manning our rush lanes, the integrity of trying to cage that pocket. I mean, all those things are going to play a part (Saturday).”