STARKVILLE — For much of the 2022 football season, I wondered who would get my first-place vote for the Heisman Trophy.
Would I pick Alabama’s Bryce Young, the defending Heisman winner? Would it be Ohio State quarterback C.J. Stroud? Was Bama’s Will Anderson Jr., who got my vote last year, worthy again?
Ultimately, though, the decision was easy.
USC Caleb Williams won the Heisman on Saturday night. He deserved it. And I voted for him.
It’s hardly the controversial choice, which in some ways I made last year when selecting Anderson as college football’s most outstanding player. Mine was one of 31 first-place votes for the Crimson Tide edge rusher; Young got a whopping 684, more than 600 above second-place finisher Aidan Hutchinson of Michigan.
Williams’ victory was a similar landslide, as the Oklahoma transfer beat out finalists Stroud, TCU’s Max Duggan and Georgia’s Stetson Bennett IV for the sport’s premier award.
My three-man ballot included three of the finalists, but Bennett wasn’t on it.
That’s no disrespect to the signal-caller of the defending national champions, who are as yet undefeated as they await Ohio State in the College Football Playoffs.
But I vote based off statistics, and Bennett’s — while impressive — didn’t quite measure up.
Bennett’s 20 passing touchdowns and six interceptions are solid but unspectacular; Mississippi State quarterback Will Rogers, for example, finished the year with 34 touchdowns and six picks.
Rogers, too, had a solid year, but he lost whatever status he had as a potential Heisman dark horse when the Bulldogs dropped to 5-3 on the season in October.
It’s hard to select a Heisman winner from any school but a Playoff contender unless there’s a huge statistical discrepancy, and I just didn’t see that in 2022.
Williams’ Trojans missed out on a spot in the final four thanks to a loss to Utah in the Pac-12 championship game, but USC was in the upper half of the top 25 all season under new coach Lincoln Riley.
A healthy Williams might have won that final game. He posted an astounding 37 touchdowns against just four interceptions, rushing for another 372 yards and 10 scores.
Simply put, nobody else measured up.
Stroud had strong numbers as well — 37 passing touchdowns against six picks — but his weapons at Ohio State were a cut above Williams’ targets at USC. Even with Jaxon Smith-Ngijba hurt all season, Marvin Harrison Jr. and Emeka Egbuka trump Jordan Addison and the rest of the Trojans’ wideouts.
Additionally, Stroud came up small in the Buckeyes’ biggest game, throwing two interceptions in a 45-23 home loss to Michigan that nearly kept OSU out of the Playoff.
It was far from a terrible performance, but it wasn’t enough to convince me Stroud was Heisman worthy.
Duggan, however, almost proved the opposite.
Even in a loss, the TCU quarterback’s gutsy performance against Kansas State in the Big 12 championship game opened some eyes — including mine.
Covering Mississippi State all year, I hadn’t gotten to watch a lot of TCU or, to be honest, many other good teams. It’s an admitted problem with the Heisman process; many Heisman voters are too busy with the programs they cover to have time to watch every potential candidate.
But Duggan’s big game wowed me, and so did his impressive statistics for the year.
Duggan threw 30 touchdown passes and just four interceptions, rushing for more than 400 yards as well. He led the Horned Frogs to their first-ever College Football Playoff and nearly saved their undefeated season in the process.
After taking stock of the weekend’s conference championship games, I submitted my ballot on Sunday, a day before the deadline.
There was little doubt.
Theo DeRosa’s Heisman ballot
- Caleb Williams, USC
- Max Duggan, TCU
- C.J. Stroud, Ohio State
The best of the rest
There were plenty of great players in college football this season besides the three I voted for. Here’s who I would have voted for if I’d had 10 spots to fill — and why each player didn’t make my ballot.
- Tennessee QB Hendon Hooker. An ugly loss at South Carolina — and a torn ACL suffered during it — sank Hooker’s Heisman candidacy. But the former Virginia Tech quarterback delivered some huge moments in Knoxville, including a 52-49 win over Alabama on Oct. 15.
- Michigan RB Blake Corum. Like Hooker, a knee injury late in the season hurt Corum’s candidacy. But 1,463 rushing yards and 18 touchdowns for the country’s second-best team can’t be ignored. I’m skeptical of ranking running backs too highly, but Corum had a great season.
- Georgia QB Stetson Bennett IV. Although Bennett’s passing stats aren’t eye-popping, he’s taken a leap this year, and what he’s done has been impressive nonetheless. Georgia’s defense — often rightfully — gets the credit, but Bennett is a reasonable Heisman contender although not a deserving winner.
- Alabama QB Bryce Young. As with Bennett, I got to watch Young carve up a strong Mississippi State defense in person this year. Alabama certainly had a down year by its standards, losing two games and barely hanging on in a few others, but Young remained an elite quarterback in 2022.
- Washington QB Michael Penix Jr. The transfer portal paid off for Penix, who left Indiana to post a great season in Seattle. Penix led the country in passing yards by a good margin, throwing for 4,357 yards on the season with a 29-to-7 touchdown-to-interception ratio.
- North Carolina QB Drake Maye. The redshirt freshman ended up remaining in Chapel Hill after weighing a transfer away from UNC. Maye’s candidacy was hurt by the Tar Heels’ three straight losses to end the season, but he posted fantastic passing numbers all year.
- USC DL Tuli Tuipulotu. I can’t pretend the top 10 players in the country are all on the offensive side — and mostly quarterbacks. Defensive players deserve credit, too, and Tuipulotu was the best of them in 2022. He wasn’t up to Anderson’s level, but 21 tackles for loss and a nation-leading 12.5 sacks are impressive totals.
Theo DeRosa reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @Theo_DeRosa.
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