On3 Final Heisman Trophy Top-6 Poll
The 2023 Heisman Trophy ceremony is right around the corner and it’s been a competitive race from start to finish this season. But who would win the award if the voting were today?
We’ve stopped to gather the experts at On3 to poll them on how they’d vote if they had a Heisman Trophy vote to give you an idea of how the race is currently shaping up now that the games are done.
Our methodology polls four On3 experts on a six-person vote. If an expert ranked a player first, they’d get six points. If they ranked them sixth, they’d get one point, and so on and so forth. From there, we tabulated the totals to see who the Heisman Trophy leader is. Let’s dig in.
1. QB Jayden Daniels, LSU (24 points)
Daniels was absolutely spectacular down the stretch, starting with a record-setting performance in a game against Florida. In his last three outings before the Heisman Trophy vote, Daniels recorded 17 total touchdowns and accounted for 1,020 yards passing and 450 yards rushing. Those are some insane numbers.
Perhaps the lone knock on Daniels is that he wasn’t on a playoff-contending team, as LSU had picked up two losses in the first month of the season. Still, he was often the only reason LSU was winning or in games, and that has to be taken into account.
2. QB Michael Penix, Washington (19)
Where the Heisman Trophy race could get interesting is in the fact that Penix was playing on a playoff contender while putting up the kind of numbers he did. Washington earned its second playoff berth and will get a chance to compete for a national title. And Penix is a huge reason why.
The talented gunslinger finished his campaign with 4,218 yards passing and 33 touchdowns, against nine interceptions. He wasn’t a huge rushing threat, with only three touchdowns on the ground, but he really didn’t need to be. That’s a testament to how good a passer he was all year.
3. QB Bo Nix, Oregon (16)
Nix’s Heisman Trophy campaign might have come to a halt in the Pac-12 Championship Game, if for no other reason than because it was his second time on the big national stage and his team failed to win. Nix was good enough, throwing for 239 yards and three touchdowns, while also rushing for 69 yards. Still, Oregon couldn’t get it done.
If not for what Daniels has done on the ground, Nix would probably get a little bit more credit as one of the nation’s elite dual-threat quarterbacks, even though he didn’t run as much as a year ago. Nix finished his season with 4,145 yards and 40 touchdowns passing, against just three interceptions. He also added six rushing scores.
4. QB Jalen Milroe, Alabama (11)
It’s wild that a quarterback who was benched just two games into the season is in Heisman Trophy consideration, but Milroe has managed to put himself in exactly that position. Deservedly so, too. The Alabama quarterback led his team to an SEC title with a win over Georgia, throwing for 192 yards and two touchdowns without an interception.
Milroe’s numbers — 2,718 passing yards, 23 passing touchdowns — don’t necessarily stand up to others vying for the award, but he’s been the impact player on the Alabama offense the second half of the season. His rushing ability is a huge part of that; Milroe has 468 yards and 12 touchdowns on the ground.
T-5. WR Marvin Harrison Jr., Ohio State (7)
The On3 experts gave some love to the non-quarterbacks toward the bottom of the polling, and Harrison is as good a place as any to start. The Ohio State wideout might be one of the most individually talented players in the game regardless of position.
Time after time when Ohio State needed offense it would target Harrison and he would come up big. The Buckeyes came up one game short of the playoff but through no fault of Harrison’s. He was terrific in piling up 67 catches for 1,211 yards and 14 touchdowns.
T-5. DT T’Vondre Sweat, Texas (7)
The mammoth Texas defensive tackle is the other non-quarterback to get some love in the hypothetical Heisman Trophy polling, picking up seven points from our On3 experts. Sweat was a monster on the interior for the Longhorns throughout the season.
He might have made the bulk of his case on the big stage, though, catching a touchdown pass out of the jumbo formation in the Big 12 Championship Game against Oklahoma State. Sweat finished the season with 42 tackles, 8.0 tackles for a loss, 2.0 sacks, four pass breakups, a blocked kick and seven quarterback hurries.
That’s how the On3 experts see the Heisman Trophy race shaking out currently, with no games left to be played until the ceremony. The deadline for the 870 members of the media and the 57 living Heisman winners to fill out and submit their ballots is Dec. 4 at 5 p.m. ET. The Heisman Trophy ceremony will take place on Dec. 9 on ESPN.