This might be the year of the quarterback in college football. Led by Arch Manning, there is a really large number of potential standouts this year along with him: Cade Klubnik, LaNorris Sellers, Garrett Nussmeier, Sam Leavitt, and Drew Allar.
But among them, no real favorite stands out. Sure, it's probably going to be Manning, but he has 95 career passing attempts. It's a bit premature to say that, even if it feels likely. That's why The Athletic's staff couldn't name one of the QBs the Heisman winner in their prediction.
Instead, they went with Jeremiah Smith, who arguably is the best player (excluding positional value) in the country anyway. "The lack of clarity atop the quarterback pecking order makes it even easier for such a large chunk of our staff to favor the consensus best overall player in the country, Jeremiah Smith, to take home the Heisman Trophy," they wrote.
Of course, winning it as a wide receiver is hard. DeVonta Smith won in 2020, but otherwise, it's been 1991, 1987, and 1972 for the other Heisman wide receivers, and they all had a lot of special teams work to help. Travis Hunter also played defense in 2024, so he wasn't even a pure WR. Smith also has a lot of good WRs with him on Ohio State, and they've got an inexperienced QB (Julian Sayin) under center now.
"Still, more than half of our voters are betting on his pure talent winning out after the No. 1 recruit dazzled as a freshman, catching 76 passes for 1,315 yards and 15 touchdowns for the national championships," they concluded. Smith garnered 15 of the 28 possible votes, with Garrett Nussmeier coming in second with a whopping five.