A glut of upsets throughout college football in Week 7 impacts not only conference and College Football Playoff races but also the quest for the Heisman.
As upsets abounded and four top-10 teams lost their first games of the year over the long Week 7 schedule, the individual Heisman Trophy race shuffled along with the team rankings in the AP Top 25 and Coaches poll.
Team success certainly plays a factor in who emerges as a Heisman winner. After all, we haven’t seen a player on a team with a losing record capture the award since Paul Hornung won while playing for a 2-8 Notre Dame team in 1956. And Hornung’s win is the only time a player on a losing team has claimed the award.
So, it cannot be argued that winning is insignificant. But it is not the entire equation, as recent winners like Lamar Jackson and Tim Tebow earned the honors in seasons where their teams failed to even reach double digits in the win column.
Success, though, is relative. And when a team falls from the ranks of the unbeaten and/or tumbles out of the AP Top 25, a lot of the blame for the downturn is inevitably going to fall on the shoulders of a team’s star players. As a result, we see several players like Luke Falk and Rashaad Penny fall out of the top five of this week’s Heisman Watch.
Who will take their place in the hunt for the most coveted individual trophy in college football? Keep reading for our Week 7 selections in the latest edition of the Heisman Watch at Saturday Blitz.