Heisman watch: Can Caleb Williams buck history and make late Heisman run?

The deck is stacked against a true freshman who didn’t take over the starting role until Week 7, but will the explosiveness of the Sooners quarterback trump history?

Oklahoma has been down this road before with a true freshman. Twice, in fact.

There was Jamelle Holieway, who in October 1985, took over for a second-year starter in Troy Aikman. Holieway spearheaded an eight-game winning streak, capped with a win over Penn State as the Sooners claimed the national championship.

There was Adrian Peterson, a force of nature in 2004. He shared the backfield with the defending Heisman Trophy winner in quarterback Jason White and the running back made a run at history behind 1,843 yards and 15 touchdowns at the time of voting. If not for White — who was 40 points behind Peterson — maybe it would have been Peterson hoisting the trophy instead of settling for runner up to USC’s Matt Leinart, besting Herschel Walker’s third in 1981 for the best finish by a true freshman.

Caleb Williams is making a late run at the Heisman Trophy

The Sooners have seen both sides of this coin: a replacement a removed from high school who set the course of a season; and a superstar making waves with eye-popping statistics.

In Caleb Williams, Oklahoma may have both — but does that mean in terms of the Heisman race?

There’s no denying the Sooners — who thanks to more upheaval, are sitting at No. 3 in the latest AP Top 25 poll — are a different team since Williams took over at quarterback for Spencer Rattler. They’ve scored a combined 107 points the past two weeks against then-No. 21 Texas and TCU, with Williams racking up 507 total yards and eight touchdowns.

So far in October, Williams is averaging 10.95 yards per play, third in the nation, and second only to Ohio State’s C.J. Stroud (12.69) among Power Five players. Stroud is also the lone player among the major conferences that Williams is looking up at in efficiency rating (201.8 to Stroud’s 242.5).

Expected to be among the nation’s most explosive offenses, the Sooners rarely looked the part with Rattler – he of the summer’s best Heisman odds – at the controls. They went over 430 yards once in his starts this season, with 624 against Western Carolina, but managed 313 vs. West Virginia and 392 against Kansas State, the last game before the Red River Showdown, when Rattler was benched in the second quarter and Williams took over.

Now 7-0, Oklahoma has its offenses sorted out and remains on a path for the College Football Playoff. But as spectacular as Williams has been, including setting program records for a true freshman in single-game passing yards (295) and touchdowns (four), glass ceilings persist when it comes to the Heisman, and they’ve proven insurmountable for those that have been in the same position as Williams.

While there are correlations with Peterson, the last Oklahoma true freshman to captivate in this fashion, but he saw action from the jump his first year in Norman. Peterson already had close to 1,000 rushing yards before the season’s halfway point, which was when Williams made his first start. The path Williams is paving has been laid recently, by Ohio State’s Cardale Jones, Clemson’s Trevor Lawrence, and, of course, decades before by Holieway.

Jones didn’t get his first start for the Buckeyes until the Big Ten Championship Game, when he started one of the most dominant spurts the sport has seen in recent memory, in leading Ohio State past Wisconsin, then Alabama and Oregon en route to a national title. Had the Heisman vote taken place after the bowls, who knows how it ends for Jones, but he had all of 34 attempts by the voting deadline.

Lawrence – another true freshman — took over for an injured Kelly Bryant four games into the 2018 season in powering Clemson to a championship. Like Jones, he saved his best for last with a combined 674 yards and six touchdowns in the playoff. He finished in the top 10 nationally in touchdowns and seventh among major-conference passers in efficiency rating, and he didn’t crack the top 10 in Heisman voting.

Neither did Holieway — the first true freshman before Lawrence to lead his team to a national title — whose resume included a Sooners record for total offense (324 yards), seven or more rushes of 30 or more yards, and directing an attack that averaged 36.1 points per game.

Bo Jackson ad Chuck Long waged one of the tightest Heisman votes in history that year, with the Auburn running back Jackson winning by a mere 45 points, while the eventual champion Sooners didn’t have a player finish in the top 10.

Williams could be different. Playing sparingly in three of the first five games, and setting entirely for two of them, he’s chasing a ghost with Notre Dame’s Angelo Bertelli in 1943 standing as the only eventual winner to miss multiple games. But Williams most certainly could generate some support if he continues this level of play within a schedule that includes two Top-25 opponents in No. 20 Baylor on Nov. 13 and the Bedlam Game vs. No. 8 Oklahoma State on Nov. 27, not to mention another likely coming if the Sooners reach the Big 12 Championship Game.

This Heisman race has, frankly, been lackluster. That starts with Rattler’s freefall and includes a host of contenders that come with some kind of blemish. Alabama’s Bryce Young remains the favorite, and his numbers are strong, but not overwhelming; Ole Miss’ Matt Corral had impressive stats but came up short in his biggest opportunity on the schedule vs. Alabama; Stroud missed a game; and Desmond Ridder comes with the hurdles of a Group of Five team, even if Cincinnati is a legitimate playoff threat.

How then could Williams not be a factor? The trophy may be out of his grasp but given the Sooners’ place in the playoff hunt and the state of this award hunt, he most certainly can make a run at what Holieway, Jones and Lawrence couldn’t in stepping into the shoes of an incumbent starter.

In the span of two weeks, Oklahoma has gone from all kinds of questions at quarterback to having one of the most exciting players in the nation at the position. The chase for the Heisman is going to be that much more interesting because of that.

Heisman stock watch: Who is heating up, who is cooling off?

Buy: Bryce Young, Alabama/Matt Corral, Ole Miss

The SEC has the co-leaders in this race, and both put together monster days in Week 7. Young torched Mississippi State to the tune of 348 passing yards and four touchdowns; Corral lit up Tennessee for 231 yards and two scores and ran for 195 more yards. It was an impressive bounce-back performance for Young, who now leads the Power 5 with 24 scoring strikes and is third among those passers in efficiency (180.4) While Corral did throw his first interception of the year, he offset that blemish with production on the ground that was the most of any FBS quarterback since Louisville’s Malik Cunningham had 197 on Nov. 14, 2020, and the most in the SEC since the Rebels’ John Rhys Plumlee had 212 vs. LSU on Nov. 16, 2019. If the next seven weeks are going to be Corral and Young trying to one-up one another, we’re all in for a treat.

Sell: Spencer Sanders, Oklahoma State

Opposite Williams in this rivalry, Sanders had the look of a preseason longshot worth watching in the Big 12, and he hasn’t disappointed in throwing for 959 yards and six touchdowns and running for 216 yards and three more scores. The five interceptions – four of which have come in the past two weeks at the hands of Texas and Baylor – are unsightly, dropping him to 78th in pass efficiency (128.6) and he and the Cowboys offense have a difficult matchup vs. an Iowa State defense that’s ranked fourth in FBS and in Ames that yielded 173 yards to Iowa and 276 vs. Baylor.

Buy: Jordan Davis, Georgia

We’ll save the debate over whether a purely defensive player can ever win the award for another day. No. 1 Georgia is fueled by a defense that has allowed all of five touchdowns, including one on the ground, and Davis is its hulking centerpiece. The lineman’s numbers aren’t going to wow anyone, as he’s had 18 tackles, three tackles for loss and 1.5 sacks on the season, but the nation’s best team doesn’t have a legitimate contender elsewhere. It has played two different quarterbacks in Stetson Bennett and JT Daniels, neither of whom has played every game, and doesn’t have a running back with more than 400 yards. So why not Davis? Maybe Kirby Smart should consider giving the 6-foot-6, 340-pounder some carries in goal-line situations to increase his chances, but if Georgia’s defense continues this level of domination, Davis is going to give voters something to think about.

Sell: Jayden Daniels, Arizona State

Buzz was building amid a three-game run in which Daniels averaged just under 300 total yards per game with no interceptions, helping the Sun Devils to 18th in the AP Top 25. He passed for just 97 yards in the second half of Saturday’s loss to Utah and was sacked four times after the break. The Utes effectively took away his ability to do damage in the open field, limiting Daniels to 32 yards rushing on 14 carries. He’ll face some underwhelming defenses over the next two games with Washington State (81st nationally) and USC (71st), but the momentum Daniels was building has taken a hit.

Buy: Bijan Robinson, Texas

How much can a player’s performance overcome the state of the program he’s doing it for? That’s a nice way of saying that Robinson has been very, very good on a bad Texas team, but that’s the reality of his season. He rolled for 135 yards and two touchdowns in a loss to Oklahoma State, the Longhorns’ second straight, but is third in the nation in rushing yards with 924, which is 73 behind Michigan State’s Kenneth Walker III for the top spot and leads all Power 5 backs with 10 scores. Texas is off this week but expect Robinson to pile up the yards next time out against Baylor, which allowed 216 rushing yards vs. Iowa State and 219 against Oklahoma State. The Longhorns may fall to their third straight ranked opponent, but this isn’t on Robinson, who is on the very short list of the nation’s premier backs.

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