Inside my 2021 Heisman ballot: Alabama’s Bryce Young an easy pick, but after that it wasn’t so simple

The Alabama quarterback was the clear choice, but things got murkier when it came to filling out the rest of this voter’s Heisman ballot

Alabama is making a habit out of winning Heisman Trophies.

Bryce Young was the runaway winner of the Heisman Trophy with Saturday’s announcement, the sophomore quarterback making it two straight Crimson Tide wins for college football’s highest honor – and four in all since 2009 — as he beat out Michigan’s Aidan Hutchinson by 1,357 points.

“For me, I’ve always been someone who’s been labeled as ‘not the prototype,’ Young said in his acceptance speech. “Being an African-American quarterback, being ‘undersized’ and not being the prototype, I’ve always been ruled out and kind of got doubted. People a lot of times have told me that I wasn’t going to be able to make it. For me, Its always been about not really proving them wrong, but proving to myself what I can accomplish.”

Pitt’s Kenny Pickett followed in third, with Ohio State’s C.J. Stroud, the last of the finalists, in fourth. Young’s margin of victory was ninth all-time, while he claimed 83 percent of the possible points (seventh in voting history) and his 684 first-place votes was 10th.

In following DeVonta Smith’s win last season, the Crimson Tide join Yale (1936 and ’37), Army (1945 and ’46), Ohio State (1974 and ’75), USC (2004 and the vacated ’05 win) and Oklahoma (2017 and ’18) as the only teams to win consecutive Heismans. It also marked the fourth win for the program in all, with Mark Ingram (2009), Derrick Henry (2015), Smith and Young, each coming with Nick Saban as coach.

The voting totals proved this was an easy pick following Young’s dissection of then-No. 1 Georgia in the SEC Championship Game, a performance that catapulted Alabama to the top spot in the College Football Playoff. As for the rest of the ballot, it was one of the more difficult ones in my decade-plus as a voter.

Here’s what my final ballot looked liked, and what went into those decisions:

1. Bryce Young, Alabama

You want numbers? Young has them, throwing for 4,322 yards and 40 touchdowns, better than the average of the previous 10 quarterbacks to claim the award. You want a Heisman Moment? There was the Iron Bowl comeback to save the season and then 60 minutes more of them in torching Georgia’s top-ranked defense – which had allowed 236 yards and 7.5 points per game — for 461 total yards and four touchdowns in the SEC Championship Game, his closing argument in the race.

That takedown, which propelled the Crimson Tide to the No. 1 spot in the College Football Playoff, makes Young the only Heisman-winning quarterback since 2000 to take down the nation’s No. 1 defense in his final game before votes were due. He did all this in his first year as a starter, unfazed in taking the controls of the machine that is Alabama after attempting just 22 passes last season as Mac Jones’ backup.

Heisman winners are reflections of the season, and up until championship weekend, the historical dominance of Georgia’s suffocating defense was looking like the defining storyline of 2021. Yes, he’s the epitome of what we’ve come to expect, given his position, and his team’s place in the playoff landscape, but Young did far more than check the boxes. He rewrote the narrative of the season to stand as the only legitimate choice to sit atop this ballot.

2. Aidan Hutchinson, Michigan

In 13 years of voting, Hutchinson is the second defensive player I’ve had in my top three, following Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te’o in 2012. Simply put, the Wolverines don’t beat Ohio State, don’t beat Iowa for the Big Ten title and aren’t in the playoff for the first time in without the defensive end’s exploits.

Make the case for Alabama linebacker Will Anderson Jr., who had 1.5 more sacks than Hutchinson’s 14 — which is a Michigan single-season record, by the way — when it comes to putting a defender on the ballot, but the belief here is Young was more crucial to Alabama’s season and its place in the CFP. Make a case for Georgia defensive lineman Jordan Davis, but that defense looked completely out of sorts against the only top-50 passer they’d seen all season in Young.

Meanwhile, Hutchinson hounded fellow Heisman finalist C.J. Stroud, sacking the quarterback three times with five tackles in all against the Buckeyes. He produced all season, but Hutchinson’s candidacy caught fire at the perfect time, with eight sacks over his last four games. In this voter’s mind, the Wolverines senior’s impact and and coming up big at the right moments that made him worthy of equaling Pitt’s Hugh Green (1980) and Te’o for the highest finish ever for a strictly defensive player.

3. Kenny Pickett, Pitt

Year after year, this is always the hardest spot to fill out. Consideration was given to Cincinnati’s Desmond Ridder for navigating an undefeated season and getting into the playoff, Michigan State’s Kenneth Walker III, the unquestioned best running back in the country, despite his coming up flat in the biggest game of the season at Ohio State; as well as Matt Corral in the best season in Ole Miss history.

Ultimately, it came down to a debate over Pickett and Stroud, with the Panthers’ fifth-year senior quarterback winning out. Pickett’s numbers were better than Stroud’s — his 4,319 yards are 457 more than his Buckeyes counterpart and the 42 touchdowns are four more than the Ohio State passer — and Pickett playing in two more games was a major factor there. But if you remove Pickett from the roster, Pitt’s not claiming its first ACC crown. Can you say the same about Stroud and the Buckeyes being in the Rose Bowl?

The perception of the ACC being down may hurt, but he threw for 340 or more yards seven times, the most of any team that ended the regular season in the Top 25. As the Heisman says on its inscription, it is awarded to the “most outstanding” player, but if it was a most valuable player award, it would be hard to deny Pickett the description.

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