Complete list of players on the 2015 Maxwell Award preseason watch list.
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Welcome to July. Depending on your views of how the glass if filled, it’s either the absolute nadir for college football coverage, or the final hurdle before we start ramping up for fall. Come these dog days of summer any little morsel of CFB news is like a drop of water in the desert.
With that said, your oasis for the day is the complete preseason Maxwell Award watch list. Every year since 1937, the Maxwell Award has been given out to the best college football player in America (Marcus Mariota claimed it last year). Meaning that what we have here is a very fine tool for planning out your Saturdays for the upcoming season. If one of these guys is playing, make sure that their team is on at least one of the seven televisions in your man cave.
A quick drive-by of the list shows no shortage of remarkable talent. Some names that immediately jump off the page are punishing running backs like Leonard Fournette, Nick Chubb, and Ezekiel Elliott – all of whom are Heisman contenders as well (Elliott is the preseason odds-on favorite for the Stiffarm). There’s the stable of Ohio State quarterbacks – J.T. Barrett, Braxton Miller and Cardale Jones. And then there are guys like Kyle Allen, Trevone Boykin and Royce Freeman, who will all put up monster numbers in explosive offenses.
A few possibly under-the-radar/take a flier names include Jalen Hurd – with the likes of Chubb, Fournette and Derrick Henry all sharing log-jammed SEC, Hurd tends to be the forgotten man. Everett Golson is intriguing, given that Jimbo Fisher hasn’t yet named a starting quarterback. And Brad Kaaya could get some rub should he be able to resurrect a Miami team that perpetually seems in flux.
Really, it’s impossible to look at the below list and not get excited. Gunner Kiel, Christian Hackenberg, Samaje Perine, Laquon Treadwell … how many days until August 29?
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