SEC football Heisman Trophy contenders vs. pretenders – Alabama has both

Separating the Heisman Trophy contenders from the Heisman pretenders among the SEC Heisman hopefuls who begin their season this weekend.

The curtain lifts on the SEC season Saturday, and with that first glimpse begins the jockeying for position of those trying to follow Joe Burrow and deliver the conference back-to-back Heisman Trophies.

That’s been a difficult task, with seven instances of a league winning in consecutive years in all, and just four times in what we’ll refer to as the Modern Era of the award of 1962-on after Ernie Davis became the first black winner in 1961 and Oregon State’s Terry Baker broke through for players from the West Coast a year later.

The SEC has been here before when Auburn’s Cam Newton (2010) followed a win from Alabama’s Mark Ingram (2009), and while it’s the only Power Five conference that has a planned fall 2020 return to not bring back a player that finished in the top 10 in voting last winter, the league isn’t short on star power in its list of contenders.

But which candidates will have staying power and which ones figure to drop out of the race? It’s time to decipher who’s for real and who’s not in the SEC’s Heisman pecking order.

BUY: Mac Jones, Alabama QB

Granted, Mac Jones is going into his first season as the starter, but it’s hard to find a more difficult proving ground than what Jones navigated after taking over when Tua Tagovailoa went down year. He threw for 335 yards, four touchdowns and two interceptions against rival Auburn, then followed that with 327 yards and three scores against Michigan in the Citrus Bowl. At the time the Crimson Tide played them, those were the 14th- (Tigers) and fourth-ranked (Wolverines) defenses in the nation.

The redshirt junior has plenty of weapons at his disposal (running back Najee Harris and wide receivers DeVonta Smith and Jaylen Waddle) and is operating behind an offensive line with four starters back and 128 games under their belts, including 71 starts. Jones is Alabama’s most logical candidate, but the elephant (pun intended, Big Al) in the room is five-star freshman Bryce Young. It’s unlikely the early enrollee stays a spectator all season, and how much he excels when he gets his chances will weigh on Jones’ being a true threat in this race.

SELL: JT Daniels, Georgia QB

Jamie Newman was Vegas’ favorite among all SEC players, trailing only Ohio State’s Justin Fields and Clemson’s Trevor Lawrence before the Wake Forest transfer opted out of the season to focus on his NFL prep. Next up is J.T. Daniels, though cautiously as he’s still rehabbing from a torn ACL he suffered almost a year ago while at USC.

Not buying Daniels has less to do with what he’ll be capable of when he’s at the controls of the No. 4 Bulldogs offense and is more about the redshirt sophomore’s availability. He has yet to be medically cleared for Georgia’s opener against Arkansas, and Kirby Smart said it’s likely to be a game-time decision, but if Daniels sits it’s close to death knell considering one player in the last 27 years — Florida State’s Charlie Ward in 1997 — missed time and still won the award and it’s happened just twice since 1979.

Now, if he happens to take the field Saturday against the Razorbacks, Daniels fits right alongside Jones among SEC candidates, but his availability is everything with just 10 games to play.

BUY: Kyle Trask, Florida QB

Kyle Trask set the stage for his being a force in this race with a strong finish to 2019. He started the last 10 games, including the Orange Bowl win over Virginia in which he threw for 305 yards, a touchdown and an interception and finished with 29 touchdowns in all and a 156.09 efficiency rating.

His season had a Heisman-twinge to it as those were the most touchdowns of any Gators quarterback since 2008 and the best rating since ’09, both behind Tim Tebow and Trask was second to Burrow in the SEC in completion percentage, yards and touchdowns. He’s going to benefit from a line that has three starters back and adds more experience in Mississippi State transfer Stewart Reese.

The conference’s coaches are clearly buying the redshirt senior Trask as the class of the SEC as they selected him as the First-Team All-SEC quarterback. He’s the first Florida passer to have that honor since … yep, Tebow in 2009.

SELL: Myles Brennan, LSU QB

Granted, Kyler Murray and Jalen Hurts had zero issues following up Heisman winners at Oklahoma and Spencer Rattler appears well suited to keep the seamless transitions going in Norman. So why not Myles Brennan as he takes over the LSU offense for Burrow? Not only is he trying to follow up one of the most prolific seasons in college football history as Burrow set an FBS mark with 60 touchdowns, but Brennan is also doing so with the deck is stacked against him.

The Tigers had to rebuild their offense, replacing four starters along the offensive line and with Ja’Marr Chase opting out for NFL draft prep, there’s only one player back who had more than 20 catches last season … and the guy that was pulling the strings for that record-setting LSU attack, passing game coordinator Joe Brady, is now running the Carolina Panthers offense.

BUY: Bo Nix, Auburn QB

The highs were high for Bo Nix during his freshman season as he tossed the game-winning TD against Oregon in the opener, ate the Magnolia State teams alive — throwing for 340 against Ole Miss and 335 yards vs. Mississippi State — and more than held his own in helping win the Iron Bowl and end Alabama’s College Football Playoff hopes. But he also threw three interceptions against Florida and had a rough day vs. LSU with a mere 157 yards and three sacks, and ended his year with a paltry 57.6 completion percentage that was 88th in FBS.

After navigating the gauntlet of the SEC West to earn conference Freshman of the Year honors, the task gets no easier in a 10-game schedule that includes six ranked opponents (No. 23 Kentucky, No. 4 Georgia, No. 6 LSU, No. 16 Tennessee, No. 2 Alabama and No. 10 Texas A&M). That being said, Nix has a few things working for him.

First is a deep corps of wide receivers in Seth Williams, Anthony Schwartz and Eli Stove and, most intriguing to Nix’s candidacy is the deft hire by Gus Malzahn of Chad Morris, who steps into the offensive coordinator role. Fired after two years as Arkansas coach, Morris made a start out of Tajh Boyd at Clemson and is poised to do the same for Nix.

SELL: Najee Harris, Alabama RB

To his credit, Harris is basking in the Heisman push, rolling out his own video series “The Campaign.” But unless we see the Alabama offense go back in time and run through its backs, it’s unlikely that the senior winds up with the award.

Last season, Harris had 47.9 percent of the team’s carries in totaling 1,224 yards and 13 touchdowns, ending a trend under Nick Saban as the two previous times a Crimson Tide RB had 45 percent or more under the coach’s watch — Ingram in ’09 and Derrick Henry in ’15 — it was the path to a trophy.

Harris could get that kind of workload again, but Alabama has too many weapons — see Smith and Waddle, who are even further back in the trophy contender list — and an aforementioned quarterback who’s generating attention. That’s not a formula for Harris to give the Tide a third win in this race by an RB.

BUY: Kellen Mond, Texas A&M QB

The flashes have been epic as Kellen Mond threw for 430 yards in a nail-biter against Clemson in 2018, 353 vs. South Carolina that year and burned Auburn for 335 last season. He enters his final year in College Station with the most career yards (7,329) of any SEC passer, and he’s in line to become the leading passer in Aggies history, but Mond has yet to capitalize on that time under center as 4-9 against Top 25 teams and is coming off a year in which his numbers dipped slightly (2,897 yards after 3,107 in ’18).

So, with all that relative negativity, why is Mond a buy? In his first three seasons he never played behind an all-SEC lineman and this season the Aggies are loaded up front, with four senior starters and three players appearing on the coach’s preseason all-conference squad in Carson Green, Kenyon Green and Dan Moore. Experience and stability in the pass protection set the stage for Mond to make some noise.

SELL: Kylin Hill, Mississippi State RB

Third in the conference last season with 1,350 yards to go along with 10 touchdowns, it’s perplexing that Kylin Hill came back to Starkville for his senior year considering, you know, that the Bulldogs are now running the Air Raid offense.

In his 18 seasons as an FBS head coach, Mike Leach has never had a running back post a 1,000-yard season, with Shannon Woods coming the closest when he had 926 yards at Texas Tech in 2006. It’s a guarantee that Hill won’t be logging games of 20 or more carries, which he did six times last season, though the wide-open nature of the offense is certain to create more opportunities for him to do damage in space.

But knowing the kind of numbers this scheme will put up, Stanford transfer KJ Costello, who step into the quarterback role in Leach’s first season, figures to emerge as the Bulldogs’ most logical candidate.

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