College Football 2024 Final Heisman Trophy Watchlist

December 10, 2024

Justin's NCAA college football top Heisman Trophy contenders after the end of the 2024 season. Top candidates include Travis Hunter and Ashton Jeanty.

We've reached the end. The college football regular season is over, aside from the annual Army/Navy game on Saturday. All the Heisman cases have been made, so the only thing left is to award the trophy.

The top two this year have separated themselves from the rest of the field, so there should be no surprise that I have either Travis Hunter or Ashton Jeanty as my pick. Read on to find out which one gets the nod.

Below are the top 10 Heisman contenders after the 2024 college football season. This is my final prediction of who the top 10 vote-getters will be.

10. LaNorris Sellers - QB, South Carolina

There are a lot of ways this final spot could go. You can make a statistical case for someone like Jaxson Dart, for example. However, I'm going with a vibes-based case for South Carolina's LaNorris Sellers.

South Carolina was one of the best surprises of the season, with the Gamecocks playing so well that many people have been talking about them as a playoff snub.

In the final regular-season game for the SC, the team beat in-state rival Clemson behind 166 rushing yards from its quarterback, who found the end zone twice in the 17-14 victory.

Season Stats: 64.9% completion rate, 2,274 passing yards, 17 touchdowns, seven interceptions, seven rushing touchdowns

9. Kurtis Rourke - QB, Indiana

Take away the disaster that was the Ohio State game and Kurtis Rourke is battling for the No. 5 spot in the Heisman race. However, throwing for just 68 yards in the biggest game of the season kills your shot at finishing that high.

"We're capable of competing with anybody."

Kurtis Rourke on some of the motivation and underdog mentality for Indiana Football this season. #iufb pic.twitter.com/Up7snJq902

— Joe Cronin (@Joe_cronin03) December 8, 2024

Still, Rourke led the Hoosiers to a huge year, with the team dropping just one game so far this season. He's thrown 27 touchdowns to just four interceptions all season and leads the Big Ten in yards per attempt and quarterback rating.

Season Stats: 70.4% completion percentage, 2,827 passing yards, 27 passing touchdowns, four interceptions, two rushing touchdowns

8. Quinn Ewers - QB, Texas

It's hard to win a Heisman when you miss multiple games due to injury. You have to be perfect aside from that and while Quinn Ewers was close to perfect, he wasn't all the way perfect.

Against Georgia in the SEC title game, Ewers threw for 358 yards, but he was picked off twice and the Longhorns lost in overtime. Considering Georgia lost its starting quarterback to injury at the end of the first half, Ewers has no excuse for not delivering a big win for Texas.

Season Stats: 66.2% completion rate, 2,665 passing yards, 25 passing touchdowns, nine interceptions, one rushing touchdown

7. Jalen Milroe - QB, Alabama

Alabama might not be in the 12-team playoff, but quarterback Jalen Milroe is certainly in the top 10 Heisman contenders after a very interesting year.

Milroe had his issues, notably failing to throw a touchdown pass in four of the final five games, including a horrible game against Oklahoma where he was 11-of-26 for 164 yards and three interceptions.

But Milroe's also an elite rushing quarterback, which helped him account for 35 touchdowns this season. Alabama had issues and Milroe played some role in the pair of losses to 6-6 teams, but he was far from the biggest issue in Tuscaloosa.

Season Stats: 65.9% completion rate, 2,652 passing yards, 15 passing touchdowns, 10 interceptions, 20 rushing touchdowns

6. Shedeur Sanders - QB, Colorado

It's hard to know where to rank Shedeur Sanders. As I've said all year, Travis Hunter gets the credit for Colorado's success. Whether the media is correct in that or not, it hurts Sanders' Heisman case.

Sanders leads the nation in completion percentage and leads the Big 12 in passing yards and passing touchdowns. It's been a monster year for him and he's almost certainly going to be off to the NFL after this. Barring a meltdown in the bowl game, he'll leave as the all-time career FBS leader in completion percentage at 71.8%.

Season Stats: 74.2% completion rate, 3,926 passing yards, 35 passing touchdowns, eight interceptions, four rushing touchdowns

5. Cam Skattebo - RB, Arizona State

No one made a bigger late-season Heisman push than Arizona State's Cam Skattebo, who helped lead a Sun Devils squad picked to finish last in the conference to a spot in the playoffs.

My favorite Cam Skattebo highlight was when he played at Sacramento State.

He scooped an onside kick and carried half the opposing team 20 yards into the End Zone 😂 pic.twitter.com/nfMVNTcQKi

— Coach Dan Casey (@CoachDanCasey) October 14, 2024

Over the last three games, Skattebo has nine total touchdowns. Three of those came against Iowa State in the Big 12 Championship Game, with Skattebo finishing the game with 10 rushing yards and 38 receiving yards.

Now, look -- Skattebo's not Ashton Jeanty, and that severely hurt his chances of being a real Heisman contender this year. Still, his performance down the stretch shot him up the board.

Season Stats: 263 carries for 1,568 yards and 19 touchdowns, 37 receptions for 506 yards and three touchdowns

4. Cam Ward - QB, Miami

Cam Ward wasn't able to lead Miami to a playoff spot as the team suffered a couple of late-season losses that knocked it out of contention.

But don't blame Ward for that. The ACC Player of the Year had 349 yards in the season-ending loss to Syracuse, but the defense gave up 42 points, knocking the Canes out of the playoff race.

Ward, a former FCS player at Incarnate Word before transferring to Washington State for two seasons and then to Miami for the 2024 season, isn't going to win the Heisman, but he should be proud of how well he played this year. He's a star.

Season Stats: 67.4% completion rate, 4,123 passing yards, 36 passing touchdowns, seven interceptions, four rushing touchdowns, one receiving touchdown

3. Dillon Gabriel - QB, Oregon

Are we not giving Dillon Gabriel enough credit? He's the quarterback for an undefeated team. He's the Big Ten leader in completion percentage, passing yards, and passing touchdowns. And yet, he has virtually no shot at actually winning the Heisman.

There are several reasons Oregon is the favorite to win it all, but No. 1 on that list (IMO) is the Dillon Gabriel to Tez Johnson connection.

Two guys who will be dinged as NFL prospects due to size, but both just keep making plays. Ballers. pic.twitter.com/vYaNZIMo6Y

— Dane Brugler (@dpbrugler) December 9, 2024

Just bad luck to do this in a year where the top two guys exist, I guess.

Gabriel solidified his spot as the top quarterback in the race in the Big Ten title game, going 22-of-32 for 283 yards and four touchdowns in a win over Penn State.

Season Stats: 73.2% completion rate, 3,558 passing yards, 28 touchdowns, six interceptions, seven rushing touchdowns

2. Ashton Jeanty - RB, Boise State

And now we arrive at the real battle. Ashton Jeanty sits a clear second in the betting odds right now, but stranger things have happened.

Jeanty rushed for 209 yards and a touchdown in the Mountain West title game against UNLV, bringing his season total to 2,497 yards. He now sits fourth on the all-time rushing yardage list and will need 131 yards in the first playoff game to tie Barry Sanders.

The Boise State star did nothing wrong this year. He went over 100 yards in every game and found the end zone at least once in all but one game. (And that game barely counts, as it was against FCS school Portland State.)

The only knock against Jeanty is that he's not Travis Hunter.

Season Stats: 344 carries for 2,497 yards and 29 touchdowns, 20 catches for 116 yards and one touchdown

1. Travis Hunter - WR/CB, Colorado

We've arrived at my pick for the Heisman: Colorado's do-it-all man, Travis Hunter.

I know a lot of people are going to say "snap count isn't a stat" as an argument against Hunter, but he did things this season that no one thought could happen in the modern version of college football. Hunter led the Big 12 in receptions and receiving touchdowns while also earning the conference's Defensive Player of the Year award.

Some of what Hunter does won't show up on the stat sheet, and that's understandably led to some discussions about what the Heisman values.

Travis Hunter is more than a generational player.

He is a once-in-a-lifetime player.

In the modern era of football, there has NEVER been a player who impacted a higher percentage of the game at an elite level the way he does.

We’ve never seen it before and if we ever see it… pic.twitter.com/it43lI5Qsj

— RK (@RyanKoenigsberg) December 9, 2024

To me, though, this is simple. Colorado improved from 4-8 last year to 9-3 this season because Hunter was an elite player on both sides of the ball. The narrative of 2024 belongs to Travis Hunter. This was his year.

I loved what Jeanty did, but it's only been 10 years since Melvin Gordon rushed for 2,587 yards for Wisconsin. The last player to do something resembling Hunter was who ... Champ Bailey in 1998?

Bailey was good, but he wasn't the receiving talent that Hunter is and he had fewer interceptions as well. Hunter did something absurd. The last (and only other) player with 1,000 receiving yards and multiple interceptions in a season was Troy Edwards in 1998 for Louisiana Tech, but that Bulldogs team lacked team success while playing much weaker opponents.

Season Stats: 92 catches for 1,152 yards and 14 touchdowns, one rushing touchdown, 31 tackles, one tackle for loss, four interceptions

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