Patience to dominance: Alabama’s Mac Jones’ path to Heisman contender has throwback flavor

After waiting for his opportunity, Alabama quarterback Mac Jones may be the only one who can stop Trevor Lawrence and Justin Fields from winning the Heisman Trophy.

No, Mac Jones is not Joe Burrow. But he doesn’t need to be to win the Heisman.

Alabama’s Jones has cemented his name at the top of the Heisman Trophy conversation and has been likened to LSU’s award-winning passer, with FOX Sports’ Joel Klatt proclaiming the Crimson Tide star “your new Joe Burrow,” and the numbers certainly do draw some parallels.

After torching Tennessee for 387 yards in the Crimson Tide’s 48-17 win last weekend, Jones’ five-game total stands at 1,905 yards and a 212.8 rating; through five games last season, Burrow had thrown for 1,864 yards with a 216.2 rating.

Still, he’s not Burrow.

As Pat McAfee put it on College GameDay “Joe Burrow had an absolutely unbelievable year last year, but what Mac Jones has done thus far is somehow better,” and there’s some truth to that. Consider the pace Jones finds himself on, trending toward 4,191 yards — 524 fewer than Burrow despite a spot in the SEC Championship Game putting Jones with two fewer games than Burrow would have played at the time Heisman ballots are due — and that productivity is only amplified when you consider the level of competition.

While Burrow had thrown for 10 more scores than Jones’ 12 at this point in the season, LSU’s schedule included one conference – Vanderbilt, which would win a single SEC game — and one other Power 5 opponent (eventual five-loss Texas) while playing Georgia Southern, Northwestern State and Utah State; Alabama’s SEC-only slate has been topped by No. 3 Georgia and then-No. 13 Texas A&M.

No, he isn’t Burrow.

Mac Jones is not your typical Heisman Trophy candidate

Jones is something else, something that has been largely missing from the Heisman race in an era when phenoms seize immediate playing time and ride it to the NFL Draft and those highly recruited quarterbacks that don’t have transferred en masse.

It’s been four years since the Heisman was won by a quarterback at the school he initially signed with (Louisville’s Lamar Jackson in 2016), but Jackson earned playing time from Day 1. We haven’t seen a passer go on to win after redshirting his freshman year since Marcus Mariota at Oregon in 2016, but Mariota was installed as the Ducks starter in his first season on the field.

Unlike those winners, Jones has bided his time. Rivals’ ninth-ranked pro-style quarterback in the Class of 2017, he waited behind Tua, appearing in 14 games as a redshirt freshman in 2018 and played in 12 games last year, only earning four starts after Tagovailoa was lost to injury.

Of those eight pro-style quarterbacks that were ranked above Jones in that recruiting class, five have transferred in Hunter Johnson (Clemson to Northwestern); Kasim Hill (Maryland to Tennessee and now he’s searching for a new home); Chris Robison (Oklahoma to FAU, and he’s since left that program) and Tristan Gebbia (Nebraska to Oregon State), while Michigan’s Dylan McCaffrey is seeking a landing spot. Only Stanford’s Davis Mills and Penn State’s Sean Clifford are still at their schools they signed with, while Jake Fromm has graduated from Georgia to the NFL.

Unlike so many in his class, Jones stayed put, even when Nick Saban brought in the No. 1 quarterback in 2020 in Bryce Young.

That patience was once the norm, with 2004 Heisman winner Matt Leinart – a redshirt himself, who waited out Carson Palmer at USC – or Gino Torretta — a spectator watching Craig Erickson at Miami before winning in 1992 – and Vinny Testaverde – who redshirted his first season in Coral Gables, then backed up Bernie Kosar for two years before ending his Hurricanes career as the 1986 trophy recipient.

Jones isn’t Joe Burrow, a transfer from Ohio State to LSU, who left a crowded Buckeyes quarterback room en route to rewriting Tigers, SEC and FBS record books.

What Jones is, is a throwback, and he’s literally thrown himself squarely into a trophy hunt, distancing himself within a ridiculously talented Alabama offense, and has emerged with a real chance to play the spoiler in a race that seemed destined to be between Clemson’s Trevor Lawrence and Ohio State’s Justin Fields.

Fields and Wisconsin’s Graham Mertz are both currently ahead of Jones as the top three in FBS in pass efficiency (273.0 for Mertz and 237.1 for Fields), but they’ve played in just one game to Jones’ five. The Alabama passer stands third in total offense (378.4) and first among Power 5 players, and is also first among the major conference players in passing yards (1,905) and is 13th in passing touchdowns, those figures coming with some asterisks as he’s attempted just eight four-quarter passes amid the Crimson Tide’s string of blowouts.

While he’s seized his moments, torching Texas A&M for 435 yards and four scores and Georgia for 417 yards and four more touchdowns, catching Lawrence, the favorite in this race, and keeping Fields at bay won’t be aided by the Alabama schedule in the coming weeks.

There’s not a ranked opponent remaining in the regular season as preseason No. 6 LSU and No. 11 Auburn have been major disappointments, playing a part as every remaining team on the schedule has at least two losses. There’s still a spot in the conference championship game to come likely vs. No. 5 Georgia or No. 10 Florida, but with Lawrence getting No. 4 Notre Dame on Nov. 7 and Ohio State having three Top 25 teams to play, starting Saturday at No. 18 Penn State, it figures to be a period of stat-padding for Jones depending on how long he plays in expected routs.

Those figures will come without Jaylen Waddle, who suffered a season-ending ankle injury against the Volunteers, robbing Jones and Alabama of one of their most explosive and dynamic weapons. But that figures to put the spotlight more directly on the Crimson Tide’s quarterback as the wide receiver was also fourth in the Heisman odds ahead of last week’s games, behind Lawrence, Jones and Fields.

There’s been a growing buzz for Jones’ running back Najee Harris, who Sports Betting Dime has tied for fourth in its latest odds behind that same trio. Weighing in his favor, Harris has a rushing score in each of the Crimson Tide’s first five games and each of the last players to do that (Derrick Henry in 2015 and Mark Ingram in 2009) went on to win the Heisman.

That being said, Henry’s quarterback, Jake Coker, was 30th in passing yards that season and Ingram’s, Greg McElroy, ranked 82nd.

Jones is unequivocally Alabama’s most logical candidate and he may just be the only player not named Trevor Lawrence or Justin Fields that could legitimately walk away with the award.

No, he’s not Burrow. But with a path that’s been a nod to the past, there’s a chance Jones could end his season with the same hardware.

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