Christian McCaffrey’s Heisman statement leads Stanford to Pac-12 title, but playoff dreams dashed

Christian McCaffrey make a Heisman statement in leading the Stanford Cardinal to a win over the USC Trojans in the Pac-12 Championship Game, but can they sneak in the playoff?

Stanford won their third Pac-12 championship in the last four years with a win over USC and now they wait to find out if their resume is good enough to get into the College Football Playoff.

The Cardinal were led by all-purpose running back Christian McCaffrey who did his best Reggie Bush impression with the former Trojan in attendance to see his former team in action. McCaffrey threw a touchdown to Kevin Hogan, ran 32 times for 207 yards and a touchdown and was the team’s leading receiver too with four catches for 104 yards and a touchdown.

That is the first time that’s happened this year in college football. As if all of that wasn’t enough, the Heisman Trophy candidate also added 120 yards on kickoff returns and 29 yards on punt returns. In total, McCaffrey had 471 all-purpose yards, a Stanford single-game record and good for the fifth highest single-game total for all-purpose yards in FBS history and he converted six third downs too.

McCaffrey’s performance may be good enough to push him past some of the other Heisman contenders, including the betting favorite, Derrick Henry, who broke the SEC single-season rushing record in leading Alabama to the SEC Championship earlier in the day.

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Despite the win and McCaffrey’s Heisman stock on the rise, it may not be enough to get Stanford into the College Football Playoff for the 11-2 Cardinal.

We’ll find out for sure on Sunday when the final playoff rankings are revealed, but Stanford needed either Clemson or Alabama to lose to get in and that didn’t happen.

Michigan State won the Big Ten Championship over an undefeated Iowa team and that’s not gonna help Stanford either, because the Spartans were already ranked ahead of them and Stanford beating a five-loss USC team isn’t going to impress the playoff committee.