Assessing the fall’s starting passers, in no particular order. Today: Virginia Tech senior Tyrod Taylor.

• Typecasting. Take an elusive, relatively short, mega-hyped, Blacksburg-bound quarterback out of the fertile Tidewater area of Virginia, and the inevitable Michael Vick comparisons are soon to follow. From the beginning, the book on Taylor pegged him as a scintillating athlete with the ball in his hands and just enough arm to make him an all-purpose nightmare for defenses; with that reputation preceding him, it took Tyrod all of five quarters to nudge incumbent Sean Glennon out of the cockpit as a true freshman, in the midst of an unusually ugly beatdown by eventual BCS champion LSU in 2007.

But if Taylor had the look, the hype and the basic profile of the patron saint of Hokie quarterbacks, his career to date hasn’t been what anyone would describe as a Vick-ian supernova. His trajectory has hewed more closely to the path of another hyped Hampton Roads hero, Bryan Randall, who also surpassed an underwhelming veteran incumbent (Grant Noel) to lead Tech to back-to-back 10-win seasons and a surprise ACC title in 2004. Like Randall, Taylor’s explosive natural gifts have been somewhat muted by the Hokies’ run-first, risk-averse philosophy and his own struggles as a passer, but his record speaks for itself: At 23-5 as a starter* with a pair of ACC championship rings, he should go out this winter as easily the winningest QB in school history, and his enormous progress as a passer in ’09 puts him at the center of a very plausible national championship push in his final season.

• At his best … Taylor is not just a scrambler, and it becomes more apparent as he adds bulk (roughly 20 pounds since he arrived at Tech in ’07) and becomes more comfortable in the pocket that he doesn’t have an extra, warp-speed gear that leaves imprints of his Nikes scorched into the grass. There’s still no denying that it’s his legs – both in practice and potential, because of the respect defenses have to pay to his breakaway ability –