Harrison Taggart was showing the crowd why he was Utah State’s defensive leader. Then, in one ugly second, the redshirt senior LB suffered a scary injury that left Rice-Eccles Stadium in grim, anxious silence. It happened during the second quarter of Saturday’s game against No. 17 Utah after his head hit the knee of RB Daniel Bray while making a tackle. 

With 8:33 left in the quarter, Harrison Taggart went down, and his body appeared to go limp. Players from both teams gathered around, and the medical staff took their time. A cart was waved off before an ambulance eventually came onto the field. Utah State players surrounded their captain as he was placed on a stretcher and taken away, per Fox College Football.

Harrison Taggart had been busy before the hit. He entered the rivalry game with 13 tackles through Utah State’s first two games and had already added five more against the Utes. Now, the Aggies were watching their leader leave in an ambulance. School officials said he was in concussion protocol and had suffered a neck injury. He was taken to the University of Utah Hospital, located on campus.

There was at least one encouraging image. As Harrison Taggart was being loaded into the ambulance, he raised his arm and pointed his finger toward the sky. He also acknowledged the crowd, giving everyone watching a small reason to breathe. The crowd gave him a collective applause as he was being carried into the ambulance. Still, it was a frightening scene. 

Utah State coach Bronco Mendenhall did not try to dress up the situation afterward. He also knew better than to give out medical details before having the full picture.

“I know I have to be somewhat careful in terms of what I can share medically and not, but it was significant enough,” he said. “I think I’ll just stop with he went off on a spine board, and we’re concerned, and that’s, I think, probably as far as I should go until I have more accurate information. … We’re hopeful.”

Then Mendenhall offered the clearest explanation of why the injury hit the Aggies so hard. He called Harrison Taggart “the heartbeat of our program.” After all, he is a team captain and one of the most experienced players on the roster. He had entered Week 3 as a preseason All-Pac-12 selection and one of Utah State’s main defensive pieces.

The Draper, Utah, native has taken a winding route through college football, with stops at Oregon, BYU, and California before returning home to Utah State. His experience was supposed to be one of the pieces Bronco Mendenhall could lean on while rebuilding the Aggies. But now, his teammates are spending the afternoon wondering how their captain was doing.

Utah’s head coach Morgan Scalley had another reason to feel the weight of the moment. The Utes recruited Harrison Taggart out of high school, and the coach already knew his family because Mrs. Taggart and he “went to school together.”

“First and foremost, prayers go out to Harrison Taggart,” he said after the game. “After talking with Mendenhall, he’s got feeling back. We recruited him coming out of high school. Prayers go out to him.”

And as word spread that he had regained feeling, the mood around the scary scene began to shift, if only slightly.

College football fans rally around Harrison Taggart

Fans weren’t talking about Utah State’s deficit or the rivalry. “Prayers up for Harrison Taggart; hopefully he is okay! Hate seeing a great player go down like that!” one person wrote. They were talking about a player lying motionless on the field.

Another fan put the game itself into perspective. “At this moment the game is down the priority list… Thinking about Harrison Taggart,” another posted. 

There was also plenty of concern from people who knew Harrison Taggart from his time at BYU. “Hoping for the best for former BYU LB Harrison Taggart. The worst part of football,” one fan added. 

And the early reports from the stadium only made the scene harder to watch. “Harrison Taggart is down on the field, and the stretcher and ambulance are now out on the field. Scary scene for him and the Aggies. He was initially moving his lower body, but has not moved in several minutes,” one fan updated early on.

Then came the image everyone wanted to see. “Really scary scene here at Rice-Eccles Stadium. Was incredibly silent as medical staff carefully attended to Harrison Taggart. He waves to a cheering crowd as he gets loaded into the ambulance. Good to see that at least,” another wrote. That wave became the lasting image of an otherwise brutal moment.

Football carried on. Utah State eventually fell 33-0. But the final score was almost irrelevant. For the Aggies, the hope was that the next update on Harrison Taggart would be better.