The credit belonged to Crimson Tide coaches.
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Henry averaged six yards on his 349 touches this season. Henry (6-foot-3, 242 pounds) hopes to cross paths with Campbell (5-11, 232) at that function.
The Heisman Trophy, although the most important award in college football, is subjective and won exclusively based on a popularity contest.
On the final possession of that 30-16 win against the Tigers, Henry sealed the victory by milking the final 9:18 off the clock with 12 bone-crushing, battering ram runs into the teeth of LSU’s defense. He leads the nation in rushing yards and touchdowns and is second in yards per game with 152.8. He has made up for an injury filled freshman year with superior play. With his team clinging to a 19-13 lead, he carried the ball on a mind-boggling 19 of Bama’s 21 fourth quarter snaps.
Deshaun Watson is the best player at the most important position playing for the best team.
The best NCAA players don’t stay in college football through their senior year any longer. Henry learned that lesson well, having spent the past two seasons backing up T.J. Yeldon in Alabama’s backfield.
Both Watson and McCaffrey will have sizable blocs of support, and they should. Individually, he rushed for more yards than MI and Wisconsin – two schools noted for their running games – did as an entire team. That’s mostly because the proliferation of spread offenses has spawned more dynamic quarterbacks who have overshadowed the production of traditional ball-carriers.
Henry then fared well in the SEC Championship Game on December 5 against the Florida Gators, rushing for 189 yards and a score. The 1,986 he ran for broke a 34 year old record held by University of Georgia great Herschel Walker.
The running back has been making defenders miss since his midget days. He has become one of the most durable backs in the country, carrying more times (339) than any other FBS player. The last five Maxwell winners won the Heisman and seven of the last 14 Walter Camp winners won the Heisman. Finalists Derrick Henry of Alabama, Christian McCaffrey of Stanford and Deshaun Watson of Clemson all present strong cases with no clear consensus of an obvious favorite.
Fournette, who is in Atlanta for the College Football Awards show, told AL.com that he is good friends with Henry and said they have exchanged Twitter messages throughout the year. Maybe, in a more typical year, that would have been enough, but by the time Fournette’s hopes faded, the focus had already turned toward running backs, in particular SEC running backs, which is one reason why McCaffrey, too, will probably fall short (the other reason being that most of his Heisman Moments occurred far too late at night for East Coast viewers).
Both Gerhart (2009) and Luck (2010-11) finished second, with Gerhart losing to Alabama running back Mark Ingram in the closest race in history – a mere 28 points separate the two. But a number of running back have earned the award.
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Henry was named Wednesday by SEC coaches as the league’s offensive player of the year, with Crimson Tide inside linebacker Reggie Ragland capturing the defensive honor.
