Heisman power rankings: Bryce Young, C.J. Stroud and the top 10 preseason candidates

Heisman power rankings, No. 6: Quinn Ewers, QB, Texas

Make no mistake, Quinn Ewers is going down as the great unknown of the 2022 college football season. In the simplest terms, we’ve never seen the mulleted prodigy play at this level.

Sure, he was an all-world recruit when he initially landed at Ohio State and all the reports out of Austin this offseason have been that the raw talent is absolutely legitimate. But again, raw talent only means but so much when you get up against some of the best teams in the country. Players have to put it to use and live up to the hype, which is the task at hand for Ewers.

At the same time, you couldn’t script a better situation for him to potentially contend for the Heisman Trophy than landing at Texas. A home-grown talent coming back home and leading the Longhorns “Back” with a capital B would be the stuff that voters have only dreamed of.

Heisman power rankings, No. 5: Will Anderson Jr., EDGE, Alabama

Frankly, rational human beings with eyeballs would argue that Will Anderson Jr. should’ve been a Heisman finalist last season given the numbers that the star of the Alabama defense put up as only a sophomore (sure, he was fifth in the voting, but that’s still too low).

In just his second season, Anderson was unstoppable off of the edge as he finished the year with an absurd 17.5 sacks and 31.0 tackles for loss in 15 games. Oh yeah, he also had 101 total tackles on the year. The dude was living in opposing backfields for the entire season and gave opposing quarterbacks sack-induced insomnia.

Now he’s back and with a defensive unit that, on the whole, is better suited to let him feast even more. The numbers he could put up could be even more ungodly, and the only thing to hold him back will be the anti-defense bias of Heisman history.