Jayden Daniels will not win the Heisman Trophy for this reason

LSU’s Jayden Daniels is performing to the caliber of a Heisman Trophy quarterback. However, his chances of winning the award are marginal for this reason.

Jayden Daniels was outstanding last Saturday night in Oxford. The graduate signal-caller completed 27-of-36 passes for 414 yards and four touchdowns. Moreover, Daniels added 99 yards on 15 carries and a rushing touchdown.

Daniels was second in the nation with a 141.8 rating by NFL QB Rating standards in Week 5.

Thru five weeks, the LSU Tigers quarterback is second to Washington’s Michael Penix Jr. (2,008) in all-purpose yards with 2,002. He’s also third in college football passing yards with 1,710. As AYS Sports highlighted, Daniels averages about 400 yards and four touchdowns per game.

The cumulative statistics should put Jayden Daniels well within the Heisman Trophy contender talks. However, the Tigers’ quarterback doesn’t stand a chance at winning the award.

Jayden Daniels will not win the Heisman Trophy, regardless of his metrics.

Jayden Daniels has no shot at the Heisman Trophy because the LSU Tigers will not win enough games.

The Heisman Trophy involves many criteria, but ultimately, the award goes to the most outstanding player in college football. Well, that’s supposed to be how it works, but LSU fans know better.

Determining a season’s most outstanding player is a subjective decision laced with hype and collective success. For example, Derrick Henry won the 2015 Heisman Trophy with 2,219 yards and 28 touchdowns. Was his season more outstanding than Christian McCaffrey’s?

McCaffrey rushed for 200 fewer yards (2,019) and touchdowns (8), but he caught 45 passes for 645 yards and five touchdowns. Stanford won 12 games largely because of their star running back. Such indicates McCaffrey was college football’s most outstanding player in 2015, right?

Ultimately, Henry won the award because he was the face of Alabama’s title run. Henry was fantastic for the Crimson Tide, but he was surrounded by a level of talent unheard of at Standard. Regardless, the reality is that the Heisman Trophy winner is typically the face of a team competing for a national championship.

Heisman Trophy winners are almost always on teams competing for the National Championship

Scroll through the list of Heisman Trophy winners since the millennium change, and two outliers exist. Indeed, Robert Griffin III (2011) and Lamar Jackson (2016) are the only awardees who did not play for a team in the national title hunt in the later stages of the season. Jackson is also the only winner since 2000 whose team finished the season with less than ten wins.

I anticipate some readers will point at Caleb Williams winning the Heisman Trophy last season despite USC’s absence from the CFP. That is true; however, Heisman votes are submitted before conference title games. Such includes the 2022 Pac-12 Championship Game in which 1-loss USC played (and lost to) Utah.

Jayden Daniels can outplay Williams and Penix for the remainder of 2023, and he will not win the Heisman Trophy on a 2-3 loss LSU team destined for another Cheez-It Bowl. I doubt we’ll hear Daniels mentioned among the award’s candidates in any week for the remainder of the season.

It’s not fair to Jayden, but it is what it is.