CFB Early Season Award Winners

Ryan Rubinstein (0:03)

Welcome to the Off The Charts Football Podcast.

I'm joined by Andrew Oja, a member of our office department, and Bryce Rossler, a member of our R&D department. We got a great show for you guys this week. We're going over some college football. We're going to be discussing now that we've entered some conference play. We're going to be talking about some stars that have shined bright so far early on in the season. We got some early seasons awards. Each one of us picked a guy. We did this semi-blindly, so some of us have similar answers. Some of us tried to stay away from each other, but still would say that, hey, we would have chosen this guy had you not chosen him. But we just wanted to highlight a couple other people here. But we'll get started out with the big one, I would say, the Heisman Award. Bryce, so far this season, who is your Heisman Award winner?

Bryce Rossler (0:48)

I think it has to be Jeremiah Smith. The Heisman's not really a strict production award. Like, there's definitely some vibes based stuff to it. But if you looked at the last eight or so Heisman winners, he would be second on the list in terms of total points. If he finished at his current pace, which would be 60 total points, he'd be ahead of Devante Smith and behind Travis Hunter. But I think the heuristic here is, are any of the quarterbacks good enough to win? Because this is basically a quarterbacks award unless there's, one, a really outstanding skill position player, or, two, the quarterbacks just aren't exciting. So I looked at the net EPA for quarterbacks who have won this award, and it's typically pretty high. It's like 188 expected points added across a season if you remove the high outliers, which would be Lamar's season. His EPA actually wasn't very good, but he was obviously driving everything good that they did. And then on the high end, that's the kind of Murray the year he won it. But you have two quarterbacks that are sort of pacing that way.

And it's Notre Dame CJ Carr, and it's Miami's Terry and Mensa.

But I kind of think both those guys are boring. Like I know this, I know I'm a little pro football brained, and this isn't an award about like who is the best pro prospect. Because I think among this group, like that's Jeremiah Smith. But Smith is just so much more exciting. Like even even if he is not technically responsible for more production, I would go Jeremiah Smith just because I don't think that Carr and Mensa are that sort of like appointment viewing like Jeremiah Smith is. Like I'll watch I'll watch Ohio State whenever Jeremiah Smith is playing.

But I cannot say the same for CJ Carr, Darian, Mensa.

Ryan Rubinstein (3:01)

Yeah, I'm in agreement with you there on that one. I think Jeremiah Smith is the best player in college football, is the most exciting. And if that's what the award is, is awarding the best player in college football, I think that would go to him. But as you said in the past, this is just kind of like a quarterback award per se. It is kind of more of a vibes-based award. And I do think that Jeremiah Smith is that player to win this award. But if I had to put money on someone to win it, I would go with one of those two quarterbacks that you mentioned. My pick for this award is Darian Mensah. Miami's 5-0, currently ranked number three, pacing to win the ACC here. Mensah currently leads the country in completion percentage, slightly over 84%.

He also leads the country in catchable pass percentage, 95% as well.

He's third in the country in yards per 10, 10.8, and also is first in IQR as well with 147.7. 15 touchdowns in the year, no picks. But like I said, that's just me arguing for a quarterback. If I had to, I was kind of curious. I was also kind of leaning Jeremiah Smith when I first started doing research for this one. So I kind of wanted to see what he was pacing like through the first six weeks of the season, through his first five games, and comparing it to DeMonte Smith's season from his Heisman year. So Jeremiah Smith has 48 catches for 916 yards and 11 touchdowns so far this year. DeMonte Smith's Heisman season, he had at least through five games, his first five games, 45 catches, 556 yards and four touchdowns. So completely outpacing him. And then I did even a little further research. And I know Michael Crabtree's 2007 season, that's regarded as one of the best college wide receiver seasons ever. Through that first five games this season, he had 60 catches, 920 yards, and 14 touchdowns, which is 12 more receptions than Smith, but just about the same amount of yards, three more touchdowns. A little side note on that one, did not finish top 10 in Heisman voting. That's the year Thibaut won. So again, I think that's absurd, especially with the year he put up. But arguably more Jeremiah Smith on that one, kind of outpacing the Heisman winner and keeping on pace with one of the seasons regarded as best ever. That would be my non-quarterback that I'd give it to. Oja, who would you give this award to?