An early contender reinserted himself into the 2017 Heisman race with a huge performance. Here is the current top five in the Week 4 Heisman Trophy Watch.
Just when it seemed like quarterbacks were poised to dominate this year’s Heisman race, the tables have turned over the past fortnight. Then Week 4 transpired and upsets around the country knocked a few of last week’s favorites from the list of Heisman contenders.
That opened the door for other skill players to jump back up the fight to become this year’s most outstanding player in college football. Perhaps this is the year for another running back to win the Heisman for just the third time this decade.
Which players have asserted their claim on the award four weeks into the 2017 season? Keep reading for our top five picks in this week’s Heisman Trophy Watch.
We begin this week’s list with the defending Heisman Trophy winner. Lamar Jackson continued to play at a high level against Kent State, helping the Cardinals move to 3-1 on the season. Against the Golden Flashes, Jackson had an up-and-down performance. But as Jackson helped Louisville coast to a 42-3 victory against their MAC opponents, he did enough to keep hanging on at the edge of this week’s rankings.
For the first time this season, Jackson failed to reach 300 passing yards in a game. Kent State held Jackson to 299 yards and picked off two of his passes. Pocket Lamar also refrained from running much, gaining just 34 yards and a score on the ground in eight carries. Staying between the tackles, he had an efficient day against the Golden Flashes as he completed 18 of his 22 passing attempts in just three quarters of play.
He will drop a spot down the Heisman Watch rankings this week. It wasn’t the strongest of performances, but it was enough to keep the Cardinals quarterback in the hunt to win the stiffarm trophy for a second time. At this point Jackson is still a longshot to join Archie Griffin as the only repeat winner of the Heisman, but there is still plenty of season left to play.
Last year, San Diego State relied on FBS all-time leading rusher Donnel Pumphrey to generate a large portion of its offense. The Aztecs star led the nation with over 2100 rushing yards. But Pumphrey finished just 10th in the Heisman voting, and it will always be tough for a Group of Five star to break into the top three in the vote. Right now, though, Rashaad Penny is making Aztecs fans forget Pumphrey as he continues to climb up the national charts.
Rashaad Penny had a relatively quiet night on the ground in a tight 28-24 win on the road at Air Force. For Penny, though, a quiet night means that he still ran for 128 yards and three touchdowns and added three catches for another 18 yards. He is currently second in the nation in all-purpose yardage, as he averages 230 yards per game.
So far Penny is averaging nearly 25 more yards per game than his former teammate. No Aztecs player has finished in the top three of Heisman voting since Marshall Faulk was the runner-up behind Miami’s Gino Torretta in 1992. If he keeps playing as well as he has, and if San Diego State continues to win on the path toward a third straight Mountain West title, Penny could get a long look from the voters for the award this season.
For the past two years, Stanford leaned on the versatile playmaking of Christian McCaffrey. Now that he is playing on Sundays in the NFL, the Cardinal were forced to move on from their multipurpose offensive threat and find a new star in the backfield. Bryce Love, who ran for over 700 yards last year as McCaffrey’s understudy, has already surpassed his career high in rushing yardage after just four games.
Love had his biggest game of the year in Saturday night’s #Pac12AfterDark win over UCLA. After putting up at least 160 yards in each of his first three games, Love exploded for 263 yards against the Bruins on 30 carries. He scored once in the win, bringing his season total to five rushing touchdowns. It was his heaviest workload of the season to date, as he provided nearly half of Stanford’s total offensive output on the night.
The team has had to supplement McCaffrey’s receiving and return production in other ways, as Love has pretty much depended on carries for all of his touches this season. Even so, he is third in the nation in all-purpose yardage behind only Saquon Barkley and Rashaad Penny. McCaffrey finished second in the Heisman voting in 2015, and Love looks capable of one-upping his former teammate to become Stanford’s first Heisman winner since Jim Plunkett in 1970.
Though no fault of his own, Baker Mayfield slides a spot down the Heisman Trophy Watch this week after Oklahoma struggled to put away winless Baylor on the road in Waco. Mayfield did his part, completing 13 of his 19 passing attempts against the Bears for 283 yards and three scores. He also ran eight times for 30 yards, even after his two sacks are accounted for in the yardage.
Through four games and 101 passing attempts, Mayfield still has yet to throw an interception this season. The Oklahoma quarterback has thrown 13 touchdown passes in 2017, and he is completing over 75 percent of his throws. He bolstered his Heisman credentials with the big win over Ohio State on the road, and after rival Oklahoma State fell this weekend the Sooners are now the undisputed favorite to claim the Big 12 this year.
Last year, Mayfield set the FBS season record for passing efficiency with a 196.39 rating. If he keeps up his level of productivity through the rest of the season, he is going to blow his own record out of the water. At this point Mayfield leads the nation with a 228.3 mark, more than 30 points above his current record. He might also take down former Sooner Sam Bradford‘s career efficiency record en route to the school’s third Heisman Trophy of the 21st century.
Saquon Barkley opened the year at the top of the Heisman Trophy Watch with a dominant showing against Akron. He slipped down the rankings over the following weeks as he failed to reach 100 rushing yards against Pittsburgh and Georgia State. But Penn State found other ways to get Barkley touches, and one of the most electric players in the country now ranks atop the national leaderboards in all-purpose yardage.
In the narrow trap game victory over Iowa on Saturday evening, Barkley was able to churn out heavy yardage against the Hawkeyes. The tailback finished with 211 rushing yards and a touchdown on 28 carries in Kinnick Stadium. But he also continued to do damage in other ways as well. Barkley was once again Trace McSorley‘s favorite target, hauling in 12 receptions for 94 yards in the air. He also returned three kickoffs for 53 yards.
It all added up to 358 all-purpose yards on the day. In the process, Barkley boosted his average production to over 250 yards per game after the first third of the regular season. At this moment he is the most versatile and most complete offensive weapon in the country.
Next: The 30 Greatest Heisman Trophy Winners in History
After another complete game, Barkley tops this week’s Heisman Watch as we approach the final weekend of September.