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.
A new name emerges among the running backs in the hunt for the Heisman Trophy. After Rashaad Penny struggled in San Diego State’s loss on Saturday night to Boise State, the door opened for another name to step up and claim a spot in this week’s Heisman Watch. That spot is taken this week by electric Wisconsin freshman tailback Jonathan Taylor.
Taylor put up his third 200-yard rushing game of the season against Purdue. The Badgers tailback is now 14 yards away from passing the 1000-yard mark after going off for 219 yards and a touchdown against the Boilermakers. He added a 17-yard reception, his first career catch at the college level, in the 17-9 victory as Wisconsin remained among the ranks of the undefeated.
The stigma against freshman in the Heisman race has evaporated in recent years, though we have yet to see a true freshman win the award. (Both Johnny Manziel and Jameis Winston were redshirt freshmen when they claimed the Heisman in 2012 and 2013 respectively.)
If Taylor continues to post huge performances like he did in Week 7 against Purdue, he could challenge that last hurdle. Should Wisconsin win out and claim the Big Ten title for the first time since 2012, they will probably be in the College Football Playoff. If that happens, it will be in part because Taylor has emerged as a large part of the Badgers success.
Once again, Oklahoma looked in danger of suffering defeat. In the Red River Shootout at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, the Sooners jumped out to a decisive lead and then sat back while the Longhorns chipped away at the deficit. After looking unbeatable in the first half, Sooners quarterback Baker Mayfield was held in check through the latter half of the game.
Even then, Mayfield finished the game with 302 yards and two touchdowns on 17-of-27 passing. He finally threw an interception in 2017 to end that streak of unblemished passing luck, but he was hardly the reason why Oklahoma struggled to put away Texas. Just as it did in the loss to Iowa State, the blame fall squarely on a defense that has stumbled after securing leads.
For the year, Mayfield remains the most efficient quarterback in the FBS and on pace to break his single-season record set last season. Mayfield has improved his completion percentage by 1.7 percent from last year’s mark, and he is averaging more than one full yard higher per passing attempt than he did in 2016.
Yes, Mayfield had his lowest offensive output of the year on Saturday against Texas. And, yes, Oklahoma nearly suffered a second straight upset in the Red River Shootout. But Mayfield remains one of the top quarterbacks in the country, and he holds position in this week’s Heisman watch despite lower statistical output than usual.
A new face appears on this year’s Heisman Watch after factoring into the discussion over the past few seasons. It was a rough start to the season for Ohio State quarterback J.T. Barrett, but he has turned it around after the loss to Oklahoma with one standout performance after another for the Buckeyes.
In a big win over Nebraska in Week 7, Barrett went an ultra-efficient 27-of-33 for 325 passing yards and five touchdowns. The dual-threat quarterback added 48 additional yards and two rushing touchdowns on 10 carries.
On the year, Barrett now ranks first in the country in terms of total point generation, factoring on 158 points this year for the Buckeyes. The Ohio State quarterback ranks fourth nationally in passing efficiency, and he has racked up 21 passing touchdowns against just a single interception. He is playing at a level that matches his 2014 season when he looked like a Heisman front-runner before suffering an injury.
That season, Cardale Jones took over the starting role and led the Buckeyes run to the national title. Since then, Barrett has shouldered an outsized amount of blame as Ohio State fails to return to that level of play. He is back to Heisman-contending form, though, and Barrett slots in just ahead of Mayfield in his introduction to this year’s Heisman Watch.
Saquon Barkley got to take a well-deserved rest in Week 7. The Penn State Nittany Lions watched the chaos swirl all around them as they bumped up to No. 2 in the AP Top 25 released on Sunday. Barkley will also hold onto his spot at No. 2 in the Heisman Watch this week despite being sidelined on an open date.
Even without playing this weekend, Barkley remains atop the national lists for all-purpose yardage. The Nittany Lions star averages 217 yards per game as he contributes on both offense and special teams. He has done a little bit of everything for the defending Big Ten champions throughout this 2017 campaign.
Barkley has amassed 649 rushing yards and six scores despite the fact that every defense so far has stacked the box in an effort to contain his speed. He has added 29 receptions for 395 yards and two touchdowns in the passing game, providing a valuable safety valve for Trace McSorley and a capability to turn screens into big gains. Barkley also has a 16-yard halfback pass for a touchdown and a 99-yard kickoff return to boast as well.
There are plenty of opportunities for Barkley to build his Heisman credentials further. Coming out of the bye week, the Nittany Lions face Michigan, Ohio State, and Michigan State over the next three weeks.
If anything, Bryce Love had a disappointing game against Oregon in #Pac12AfterDark action. The Stanford tailback had 115 yards and two touchdowns on five carries after the first two Cardinal series of the game. His last 12 carries of the game picked up only 32 yards and zero scores. The Ducks made solid adjustments that contained Love and prevented him from churning off any long gains for the rest of the night.
Even then, though, the damage was already done. Love singlehandedly outscored the Ducks in Stanford’s 49-7 blowout of its Pac-12 North rival. His final stat line of 17 carries for 147 yards and two touchdowns would be a career best for most players. For Love, it was his first sub-150-yard game of the 2017 season.
The “quiet” day on the ground dropped Love’s season rushing average under 200 yards per game. Nevertheless, the Stanford back still sits nearly 30 yards ahead of Saquon Barkley as the top rusher in the country with 198 yards per game. He is also second in the country in all-purpose yardage behind Barkley, despite being almost exclusively a runner rather than a multi-threat star.
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In a normal week, such a downswing in productivity might send a player a spot or two down the Heisman Watch. But the combination of upsets and bye weeks among the other favorites allows Love to hold on to the top position as we head into Week 8.