Heisman snubs: 10 best players who got the stiff-arm from Heisman voters

This is the most egregious Heisman Trophy gaffe of the last decade. 2015 was a year where a running back was going to win it. Though Derrick Henry played well enough to win it as a member of the eventual national champion Alabama Crimson Tide, we had never seen a playmaker quite like Christian McCaffrey of the Stanford Cardinal.

Stanford has a bad Heisman history, as only Jim Plunkett has ever taken home the award. Guys like McCaffrey, Bryce Love, Toby Gerhart and John Elway have all been finalists but came up empty-handed. Given that Love wasn’t beating out Baker Mayfield, Gerhart came so close to Mark Ingram Jr. and Elway had to deal with Herschel Walker, McCaffrey’s case is the most compelling.

McCaffrey was everything for David Shaw‘s Cardinal team. He ran the ball, he caught passes, he returned kicks, he did everything. However, Stanford played on the West Coast when half the country was asleep. That benefited Henry tremendously, who pounded the rock over 40 times a game to put up his gaudy stats. McCaffrey was like 21st Century Gale Sayers for the Cardinal.

Though both have had strong NFL careers with Henry on the Tennessee Titans and McCaffrey on the Carolina Panthers, Henry felt like just another Alabama bell-cow back under Nick Saban, while McCaffrey felt like something we hadn’t seen before. Fortunately, the Heisman voters went with the more dynamic playmaker the following year by taking Lamar Jackson over Deshaun Watson.