At the very least, McCaffrey is college football’s most versatile player.
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The finalists for the 2015 Heisman Trophy, college football’s most prestigious award, were announced on Monday night, and the list of names was surprisingly short.
Before the Heisman Trophy Trust announced the finalists for Saturday’s coronation of the nation’s best college football player for an 81st year, I was anticipating a half-dozen players earning an invitation to New York City.
And in the fourth quarter, which began with the Crimson Tide clinging to a 19-13 lead, Kiffin let his workhorse carry the load even more frequently, even though the Tigers knew it was coming.
Over the past few weeks, these three individuals looked like the three sure-fire finalists, though there were other players, such as Oklahoma Sooners quarterback Baker Mayfield and Navy Midshipmen quarterback Keenan Reynolds, that seemed deserving of invitations to NY.
Besides Henry’s impressive final impression on Heisman voters holding their ballots until the final weekend, Clemson’s Watson had an ACC championship game record 420 yards total offense in the Tigers’ 45-37 victory over North Carolina.
While I can’t disclose just yet if I had an Alabama player on my ballot – I included five of them in the previous six years – I can tell you one thing.
Despite missing time with injury throughout the year, Cook was Florida State’s most important player en route to a 10-win season.
The last time there was real suspense at the Heisman presentation was 2009, when Ingram received only 1 percent more of the vote than Stanford’s Toby Gerhart.
The Heisman races from the past three seasons were fairly anticlimactic.
Henry, considered the favorite for the trophy, shared the Alabama workload past year.
A dream of a season added another layer and got a little sweeter for Derrick Henry on Monday.
While Henry is the prototypical power runner, McCaffrey is all about elusiveness and versatility.
With 461 total yards in the Pac-12 Championship Game, McCaffrey broke Barry Sanders record of 3,250 all-purpose yards. He had 207 rushing yards and 105 receiving yards along with two touchdowns.
He would be Stanford’s second Heisman victor, joining Jim Plunkett in 1970. Granted, when talking about these three young men and their performances this season, it’s hard to go wrong with choosing any of them for the award. In 2010 and 2011, Cardinal quarterback Andrew Luck placed second to quarterback Cam Newton of Auburn and quarterback Robert Griffin of Baylor, respectively.
I can tell you I didn’t vote for Rolando McClain.
The sophomore has Clemson in the playoff, trying for its first national championship since 1981. He finished with 3,512 yards passing (69.5 completion percentage, third best in the country), 30 touchdowns passing, 887 yards rushing and 11 touchdowns rushing.
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“I mean, of course I’m going to say I’m the Heisman victor, but we’ll just see what happens”, Watson said.
