The announcement was something everyone expected, but it is still momentous and the end of an era. Jonathan Taylor, whose college football career was so brilliant and luminous that he rushed for more yards than Tony Dorsett, announced that he will enter the 2020 NFL Draft, officially ending his journey as a Wisconsin Badger.
2️⃣3️⃣Thank you Madison!❤️2️⃣3️⃣ #onwisconsin pic.twitter.com/P95PFTMxlS
— Jonathan Taylor (@JayT23) January 4, 2020
The numbers are astounding, and they firmly establish Taylor’s legacy as an all-time-great college football player, not just a legendary Wisconsin Badger. Taylor rushed for over 2,000 yards in two straight seasons, having inched past 2,000 yards in the Rose Bowl against Oregon. He rushed for at least 1,977 yards in all three seasons. He accumulated at least 2,000 scrimmage yards in all three seasons at Wisconsin. He ended his career with 6,174 rushing yards, behind only Donnel Pumphrey of San Diego State, Ron Dayne of Wisconsin, and Ricky Williams of Texas. He passed Dorsett in the Rose Bowl. He stands above so many other decorated running backs.
One must pause and absorb just how much Taylor achieved in a career which also helped Wisconsin’s 2017 team produce a 12-0 start to its season, something completely unprecedented in program history. Taylor’s excellence enabled Wisconsin to win two Big Ten West titles, collect a New Year’s Six bowl win over Miami, and generally maintain the Badgers’ place as the second-best Big Ten football program of the 2010s after Ohio State.
That is one of the essential points to remember about Taylor: His excellence was not stat-padding in the midst of team mediocrity. Paul Hornung of Notre Dame won the 1956 Heisman Trophy even though the Fighting Irish had a losing record. Plenty of quarterbacks amass huge totals of yards because their teams trail and they have to throw all the time. Taylor’s stats were the product and creation of Wisconsin’s success. The personal success flowed into and from the Badgers’ prosperity.
Taylor did not win the national championship Tony Dorsett claimed in 1976 with Pittsburgh, but he did nearly everything else. Congratulations to Jonathan Taylor on a great and iconic Wisconsin career, at the end of a decade in which the Badgers produced many great running backs.