Where Notre Dame RB Jeremiyah Love stands in Heisman Trophy race after injury-affected outing at Stanford

Notre Dame running back Jeremiyah Love left the Bay Area with black and blue ribs and an unforeseen black stain on his Heisman Trophy résumé.

The Fighting Irish’s junior running back was injured vs. Stanford in the first quarter on a hard hit from the Cardinal. He didn’t return to the game until late in the second quarter, and he didn’t do much to bolster his Heisman candidacy with the reps he received from that point until he got his last carry in the final minutes of the third quarter.

All in all, he finished with 14 rushing attempts for 66 yards and a touchdown. Eight of those carries, 54 of the yards and the touchdown came on Notre Dame’s first drive of the game. Without that possession, Love might be totally out of the Heisman conversation.

He went into the game with the second-best odds to win the sport’s most coveted individual award. He dropped to fourth in the pecking order, per BetMGM, in the wake of his third-lowest rushing yards total of the season.

Here’s a look at Heisman Trophy odds according to BetMGM as of the afternoon of Nov. 30.

Player (Team)	Current Odds	BetMGM Opening Odds
Fernando Mendoza (Indiana)	+125	+5500
Julian Sayin (Ohio State)	+130	+2000
Diego Pavia (Vanderbilt)	+333	+12500
Jeremiyah Love (Notre Dame)	+1400	+5000
Jeremiah Smith (Ohio State)	+17500	+1300
Gunner Stockton (Georgia)	+25000	+3500
Jacob Rodriguez (Texas Tech)	+25000	[off the board]
Ty Simpson (Alabama)	+40000	+5500
Dante Moore (Oregon)	+50000	+2000
CJ Carr (Notre Dame)	+50000	+5000
Trinidad Chambliss (Ole Miss)	+50000	[off the board]

It’s been trending toward the quarterback from the winning team of the Big Ten championship claiming the hardware, and it’s looking even more that way coming out of the final week of the regular season.

Mendoza has completed 72 percent of his passes for 2,758 yards with 32 touchdowns and 5 interceptions. He’s run for 243 yards and 6 more scores.

Sayin knocked off Michigan on Saturday and is completing 78.9 percent of his throws with 3,065 yards with 30 touchdowns and 5 interceptions. He’s not much of a runner at all with just 27 rushing yards and 0 touchdowns on the season.

Love, meanwhile, had a record-setting season with 199 carries for 1,372 yards (6.89 yards/carry) and 18 rushing touchdowns, which ties a Notre Dame single-season record. He also has 27 catches for 280 yards and 3 receiving touchdowns. He’s No. 4 nationally in scrimmage yards per game and No. 5 in rushing yards per game. Love has the most total touchdowns of any Power Four player in 2025, and he set the Notre Dame record for the most single-season touchdowns. Jerome Bettis previously held the record since 1991 with 20.

CJ Carr is a long shot and won’t win the Heisman, but he’s on the odds list for throwing for 2,741 yards (228.4 yards per game and 9.4 yards per attempt) by way of completing 195 of 293 passes (66.6%) with 24 touchdowns and just 6 interceptions. He has a pass efficiency rating of 168.06. Carr ranks tied for third nationally in yards per attempt and fifth in pass efficiency rating. He’s No. 1 in Notre Dame single-season history with his pass efficiency rating and 10th in Notre Dame single-season touchdown passes.

As for Love, he’d have loved to have made one last statement at Stanford, but his health ended up being of more importance. That, and Notre Dame’s team success. He ended his regular season with good marks in both categories — his ribs are just bruised, not broken, and the Irish won 49-20 to improve to 10-2 ahead of the College Football Playoff selection show a week from today.

“I wasn’t really focused on it,” Love said of his Heisman Trophy campaign. “I come into this game focused on making sure that we end the season how we wanted to. We really didn’t come into it trying to do anything individually. I want the best thing for my team. We ended up getting the best thing for our team, which was a win. Finished off the season how we wanted to finish it off. That’s really all I was worried about coming into this game.”