Heisman Trophy Watch 2017: Field normalizing after Week 8

Easy wins and bye weeks marked the fortunes of Heisman contenders in Week 8. Was the order of the favorites impacted at all by the results of the weekend?

After chaos dominated Week 7, the penultimate weekend of October offered a chance for everything to normalize in college football. With only two games featuring AP Top 25 teams against one another, there were plenty of blowouts by the favorites. Six more ranked teams took their bye weeks.

That offers us the chance to parse out the Heisman field less on the fluctuations of weekly results than on the body of work built up so far. One question that has been lingering throughout the season is whether a running back is in legitimate position to take home the award this year.

Since Barry Sanders won the trophy at Oklahoma State in 1988, eight running backs have taken home the Heisman over the past three decades. Their average stat line through mid-October looks like this:

More important than those figures, though, are the per-game averages for top tailbacks. Here is the average production of the past eight Heisman winners on a per-game basis:

No back has quite matched that level of productivity this season, though several have come close. When all-purpose production is added into the mix, certain contenders separate themselves further from the pack of Heisman hopefuls.

Was anyone eliminated from consideration this weekend?

The one candidate among the group of prolific tailbacks who probably dropped out of the Heisman race for good this weekend is San Diego State’s Rashaad Penny. In the second straight loss for the Aztecs, Penny wasn’t even the best running back on the field against Fresno State. Finishing with 69 rushing yards, a nine-yard reception, and four kick returns for 57 yards, Penny was shut down by the Bulldogs as San Diego State faded in the Mountain West race.

Perfect records are not a prerequisite for a successful Heisman campaign, but players in the mix are also expected to come up big in big moments. The three running backs on this week’s list have done just that. This week we will take a look at how each backfield hopeful matches up against this historical precedent as we dive into the Week 8 Heisman Trophy Watch.