Will Heisman voters have Oklahoma fatigue despite Spencer Rattler’s brilliance?

Already the first team with finalists in four straight seasons, redshirt freshman Spencer Rattler steps into a situation that has so far been fatigue-proof.

Plug. Play. Repeat. Dominate.

From Baker Mayfield to Kyler Murray to Jalen Hurts, Oklahoma has produced two Heisman Trophy winners and an unprecedented four straight years of finalists at quarterback, and if the first taste of Spencer Rattler at the controls is a sign of what’s to come, there may not be a more fascinating storyline in this award hunt.

At some point, there has to be a tipping point, right? Lincoln Riley can’t keep making it all seem so seamless, can he? With voters seeing the same school get these elevated stats from the same position year after year, fatigue has to become a factor, doesn’t it? But there was Rattler in his starting debut Saturday vs. Missouri State, throwing for 290 yards and four touchdowns on 14 of 17 passing, setting program freshman records for efficiency rating (303.3), yards per completion (23.71) and per attempt (17.06) and establishing another top contender at quarterback for the Sooners.

To put the new guy’s performance into perspective, Mayfield threw for 388 yards and three scores in his Oklahoma debut in 2015; Murray accounted for 209 yards and two scores in his first game as the starter in ’18 and last season, Hurts had 332 yards and three touchdowns in his Sooners opener. Yes, Rattler’s numbers against a defense that was ranked 101st in FCS last season, but unlike Mayfield and Hurts, Rattler didn’t even play past halftime.

It’s key we remember Rattler is following a trio of experienced transfers, with Mayfield coming from Texas Tech with 340 pass attempts to his credit, Murray had 121 attempts at Texas A&M before he left, and Hurts landed at Oklahoma with an Alabama national championship on his resume. True Rattler logged a season of experience watching and learning and was the top passer in the Class of 2019 after throwing for 116 touchdowns in his career at Phoenix’s Pinnacle High School, but in terms of actual gameplay, he attempted a mere 11 passes in a Sooners uniform before taking over the offense, a drop in the bucket compared to his predecessors.

Spencer Rattler is a star already, but will Heisman voters have Oklahoma fatigue after four straight years of Sooners quarterbacks as a finalist, including two winners?

Five schools have had three straight years with a finalist since the Downtown Athletic Club, and later the Heisman Trust, began inviting players to the ceremony in 1982: BYU (1983-85), Miami (1984-86), Florida (2007-09), Stanford (2009-11) and Alabama (2013-15), but only the Sooners have made it four consecutive years, and done so with five players in all in that span, with wide receiver Dede Westbrook joining Mayfield in 2016.

What has been stunning about that run is how fatigue-proof the Sooners have in what amounts to a beauty pageant where falling out of favor is often an inevitability. We’re talking about one team putting three different players in three straight years at the same position in the ceremony, and now a fourth player steps in and vaults to the forefront of the award talk.

It’s incredible, because many times we’ve seen a contender fall out of favor with a narrative that had grown tiresome, be it a particular player, the scheme they play in or the team itself.

Tim Tebow had the most first-place votes in 2008 as the defending winner in arguably a better season as a junior and finished third, then was fifth as a senior; David Klingler shattered the gaudy stats of 1989 trophy recipient Andre Ware in the same Air Raid system in Houston only to be distant fifth in the 1990 voting; and Alabama overload was blamed by prominent media members (Tebow being one of them) when Tua Tagovailoa was second to Murray in 2018, setting a record for the most second-place votes and not appearing on 13 ballots.

Had anyone other than Hurts been at quarterback for Oklahoma last season, maybe that would have tested that “fatigue-proof” notion. But he was already a known commodity after his exploits with the Crimson Tide, and his ballooned passing stats were seen as part of an evolution, his unleashing after being boxed in by Nick Saban.

Does Rattler then become that test? Is he that moment where “system QB” starts being whispered?

Not if those stats, which figure to be just as gaudy as his predecessors, come with the Sooners staying at the forefront of the College Football Playoff conversation.

That’s, of course, the center of the sport’s universe and Oklahoma has bolstered candidates by staying in its orbit. Since the format’s inception in 2014, just one winner — Louisville’s Lamar Jackson in 2016 — has played for a team that failed to make the final four. Oklahoma’s run of finalists started with it being in the mix for a CFP berth in 2016 and has continued through three straight playoff appearances.

A fourth straight spot in the playoff is very much in the cards, especially in a season in which two of the Power 5 conferences aren’t playing, and with a schedule that figures to provide Rattler with stat-boosting matchups and major showdowns with fellow Big 12 Heisman contenders.

The next two games are against Kansas State and Iowa State, two teams that just lost to Sun Belt schools, and in all the Sooners’ schedule, which now shifts to Big 12-only games, includes face six defenses that were ranked 74th or lower in total D and three at 97th or worse. There are also those two key dates: No. 9 Texas and Sam Ehlinger on Oct. 10 and No. 11 Oklahoma State’s Chuba Hubbard, who the Sooners face Nov. 21.

Those two players, Ehlinger in trying to make the Longhorns a player in the national title picture again, and Hubbard as FBS’ top returning rusher, have resumés Rattler can’t match. But in the hierarchy of the biggest challengers to the clear favorite, Clemson’s Trevor Lawrence, Rattler was one of the chosen few — with the best odds behind the Tigers quarterback at +900 entering Week 1 — based on what those Sooners quarterbacks before him had already done in this offense. That stance was strengthened with Ohio State’s Justin Fields entire conference not playing and Georgia’s Jamie Newman opting against suiting up and appears to be elevated if our first glimpse of Rattler is the standard.

It’s not hyperbole to say this is already one of the greatest runs for any school in terms of an individual position. Only Army with Doc Blanchard and Glenn Davis in 1945 and ’46 had any school won Heismans with two different players at the same position in back-to-back years, and there been players invited to the ceremony back in 1944 when the running backs were second (Davis) and third (Blanchard) to Ohio State’s Les Horvath, we’d be talking about three straight years of finalists. On multiple levels, in the era of finalists, Oklahoma was already history-making, almost unfathomable in so many ways.

Rattler has given us zero reasons so far to believe it’s not going to be more of the glorious same. Fatigue-proof for its results and the Sooners’ place in the national title conversation, the formula is clear: plug, play and set a course for the ceremony.

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