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The Heisman Trophy is a regular-season award, so what happens in the upcoming bowl games and College Football Playoff will not change the result. In fact, the award will be given on Jan. 5, a week before the National Championship is played in Miami.
So with all of the relevant information in, who is the favorite to take home one of the most coveted trophies in all of sports?
DeVonta Smith, WR, Alabama (-170)
The last wide receiver to win the Heisman was Desmond Howard of Michigan in 1991. DeVonta Smith has more yards and more catches than Howard did, but fewer touchdowns and far fewer return yards.
Smith has had a favorable season compared to Howard's, however, and there is recency bias at play here. In the SEC Championship game against Florida, he caught 15 passes for 184 yards and two touchdowns. He is the online betting favorite, and for good reason.
Mac Jones, QB, Alabama (+170)
How about the guy who has been throwing the ball to Smith, Mac Jones? Quarterbacks win the award far more often than wide receivers, and Jones has been as good as any quarterback in the nation.
He ended his season with 3,739 yards, 32 touchdowns, and just four interceptions. But does having both Smith and Najee Harris as weapons diminish what Jones has done?
Hard to hold anything against a player who was at his best against top competition. Jones threw for 393 yards per game and 18 total touchdowns in his four games against ranked opponents.
If he were to win, he'd be the first Alabama quarterback to ever win the Heisman.
Kyle Trask, QB, Florida (+1900)
Kyle Trask's 4,125 yards and 43 touchdowns led the nation this season. Trask also won the SEC East and put up over 400 yards in the SEC Championship Game. From a purely statistical point of view, no one was better this season.
But he was also not without great weapons, as tight end Kyle Pitts was a monster all season long and may actually take away some of Trask's votes. It also doesn't help that while Alabama finished the season undefeated, Florida lost three games, including one to unranked LSU.
He also had the misfortune of having his final game of the season be a nationally-televised loss to both Jones and Smith.
Trevor Lawrence, QB, Clemson (+1900)
He remains the unquestioned top pick in the 2021 NFL Draft, but does Trevor Lawrence still have a claim as college football's best player? Probably not.
Lawrence finished the season strong with more than 400 yards of total offense and three touchdowns against Notre Dame in the ACC Championship. He was also 9-0 in all of his starts this season.
But the man who began the season as the odds-on favorite in every sportsbook to win the Heisman Trophy finished the season ranked 10th in passer rating.
COVID-19 has cost college football a number of things this season, and the two games it took away from Lawrence's season may be enough to cost him the Heisman.
- Tony Caliente, Gambling911.com
