Darius Taylor

The discourse around Taylor in Dinkytown has nothing to do with whether he's good and everything to do with whether he'll be available. He's the back beat writers call the "film junkie's favorite," the centerpiece Fleck builds an offense around, and in 2025 he played eight games and gave you a season-shaped tease: a Week 2 hamstring that cost him Cal and Rutgers, a return, then another flare-up against Iowa. The counting line read like a down year — 670 yards, 4 touchdowns on 4.7 a pop — but the local read is that the number lies. In every game he carried it 19-plus times, he cleared 100 yards, including the home wins over Nebraska and Wisconsin. That's the whole Taylor paradox in one stat.

The data underneath 2025 looks brutal if you don't know the context — 12th percentile in EPA per carry, 6th percentile in success rate among Big Ten backs — but that's not a talent reading, it's an injury reading: a hamstrung back grinding through stuff he had no burst for. The Daily Gopher and the beat writers aren't projecting decline; they're projecting a bounce-back, openly floating 1,000 yards if he stays upright, with redshirt-sophomore QB Drake Lindsey needing exactly the kind of ground game Taylor provides when whole.

So the stake the boards keep circling is simple and a little cruel: not can he, but can he stay. Taylor signed with Dinkytown Athletes and came back specifically to author the healthy senior year his first three seasons never let him finish. If the hamstrings hold, 2026 is the season the tape and the box score finally agree.