If not Bryce Young, then who wins Heisman Trophy?

Alabama quarterback Bryce Young enters championship weekend in the lead, but if he falters, there’s no clear answer who ends up with the Heisman Trophy.

In the final days before votes are due, everything is leading toward the Heisman Trophy being Bryce Young’s to lose.

While his biggest challenger sits at home, Young and No. 3 Alabama face No. 1 Georgia with a spot in the College Football Playoff hanging in the balance. It’s not hard to imagine a scenario where the Crimson Tide quarterback is solid, and even in defeat, does enough to solidify the award.

But there’s another scenario, the one that has befallen every other passer to face the nation’s top-ranked defense. The Bulldogs have allowed an average of 150 passing yards per game, and just five touchdowns through the air through 12 weeks. Ranked teams have fared worse, averaging 5.3 points per game than the unranked (7.4).

So, if the presumptive favorite is bottled up in the SEC Championship Game, what then?

Who are the other dark horse Heisman contenders?

In many ways, it’s been a lackluster Heisman race. The summer darlings, Oklahoma’s Spencer Rattler and Clemson’s D.J. Uiagalelei fell out of favor with a quickness. That’s nothing new, but there was no transcendent star to steal the thunder.

Think back to 2012, when USC’s Matt Barkley and Wisconsin’s Montee Ball had everyone’s attention, until they didn’t amid early setbacks, and redshirt freshman Johnny Manziel came out of nowhere to captivate and make history.

There was no undeniable force this time around after the preseason leaders Rattler and Uiagalelei faltered — at least not the ones that are those logical challengers.

That’s no knock on Young. Saturday’s win over Auburn was uglier-than-expected and going 97 yards in the final minute to push the Iron Bowl to overtime and keep Alabama’s playoff hopes alive may well be deemed his Heisman moment, but he struggled for much of the day against a five-loss team that went into that game with the nation’s 91st-ranked pass defense. Even in a win, and even with those late heroics, it left something to be desired.

To his credit, Young has literally been in record-setting mode from the get-go, rewriting program marks for passing yards (344) and touchdowns (four) in his debut, and against Arkansas had the most prolific passing day in Alabama history with 559 yards. With a game to go, the sophomore has thrown for 3,901 yards and 40 touchdowns, giving him exactly as many scores as the last 10 Heisman-winning passers have averaged, and he’s within shouting distance of their yardage (4,228).

Should he leave New York the second weekend in December with a new bronze statue, it will come as no surprise — but also remember that just a week ago, some odds-makers had Ohio State’s C.J. Stroud, not Young, as the favorite.

Young heads into his matchup with Georgia as the top choice, and for all those reasons we’ve come to expect: the top offensive weapon on a team that’s in the playoff hunt.

He checks every historical box, and those of this era, along with the benefit of every eyeball being on him during the biggest game 48 hours before votes are due. But if a Heisman winner is a reflection of a season, then Young being shackled by Georgia may force voters — this one included — to produce ballots that indeed reflect college football in 2021, because offenses haven’t been the dominant storyline.

Dominant defenses have.

Georgia ran roughshod through its schedule because of a Jordan Davis-led defense, which allowed a mere 6.9 points per game; Michigan finally dethroned the Buckeyes and is a win from its first playoff spot behind end Aidan Hutchinson, who has a school-record 13 sacks; and undefeated Cincinnati is 44th in total offense while sitting eighth (308.4 yards per game) in defense. There’s an argument to be had that Young’s own teammate, linebacker Will Anderson Jr., has been just as instrumental in Alabama’s season, leading the nation with 14 1/2 sacks.

Of the nation’s top eight teams in total defense, five (Georgia, Oklahoma State, Houston, Alabama, and Cincinnati) are playing this weekend for conference championships; just as many of the top eight in scoring defense (Georgia, Cincinnati, Oklahoma State, Michigan, and Iowa) are also playing in the final weekend.

In 13 years of voting, I’ve never had a defensive player top my ballot. The only one that ever made one of the three spots was Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te’o in 2012 when he would go on be runner-up to Manziel, tying for the best finish of any strictly defensive player.

If Young has some modicum of success against Georgia, that may not change, and he shouldn’t expect it to. But if he’s derailed, and the Bulldogs put together another clinic in doing so, their centerpiece in Davis will have made his case. If Hutchinson follows up his monster game that sent Wolverines past Stroud and the Buckeyes by punching a playoff ticket, he’ll have made his case, too. The same with Anderson should Alabama emerge in a defensive battle.

All that being said, we know there’s a big difference with this award between making a case and standing a chance, but DeVonta Smith winning last season at least opened the possibility for widespread change in voters’ mindsets.

That wasn’t just a wide receiver prying away the award in the era of quarterbacks. Smith won despite his own quarterback — Mac Jones — being a viable candidate in his own right, coming in third. The previous two pass-catchers to win, Tim Brown (1987) and Desmond Howard (1991), didn’t have to deal with that. Their quarterbacks didn’t even sniff the top 10, let alone earning the 138 first-place votes that Jones did.

A wide receiver, though, wasn’t ground-breaking. A strictly defensive player (yes, we know you ran one in from a yard out, Jordan Davis) would be something else entirely, and maybe even too much of a stretch for the 930 voters — unless that final weekend proves defense is where that transcendent, undeniable contender comes from.

There’s a case to be made that a Young setback in the SEC title game may just push attention to Stroud, who can’t exactly hurt his chances with Ohio State’s regular-season over after its loss to the Wolverines denied it a spot in the Big Ten Championship Game.

While the first-year starter threw for 3,862 yards and 38 touchdowns and ranked second in Power 5 in pass efficiency (182.2), history, both long-held and recent, tells us he’s all but done.

The first knock on his resume was sitting out Sept. 25 against Akron — only three players had ever missed a single game and still won, the last being Charlie Ward in 1992 — and the second knock is his being resigned to sitting at home while Michigan vies for a playoff spot as it takes on Iowa. In the CFP era, Lamar Jackson is the lone winner to not play for a team in the final four, and he’s also the only trophy recipient since 2012 that wasn’t in action on the final weekend before votes are due.

But Jackson was that transcendent star, captivating early and leaving little doubt he’d win despite not playing for a conference title.

Stroud remains a strong candidate to reach the ceremony, along with Michigan State running back Kenneth Walker III, Pitt’s Kenny Picket, Ole Miss quarterback Matt Corral and Cincinnati’s Desmond Ridder (if the Bearcats get that breakthrough playoff berth), with the expectation that we’ll potentially see the maximum number of finalists (six) given the vast number of candidates in this muddled race.

Finalists? Sure. Winners? Unlikely.

Davis, Hutchinson, and Anderson likely face the same ceiling, though for wildly different reasons that have been built up over 87 years. Find a reason why one should do what Te’o, Hugh Green, Brian Bosworth, Ndamukong Suh, couldn’t, and a million others will pop up.

Young has everything to gain Saturday in Atlanta, including the SEC title and a spot in the playoff. He could lose those things too, but whether you believe there’s any way he ultimately loses the Heisman, is in answering this simple question.

Given everything we’ve seen over the years with this trophy, voting tendencies and biases, if not Young, then who?

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