Deshaun Watson, Derrick Henry, Christian McCaffrey named Heisman finalists

QB Deshaun Watson Watson isn’t just the quarterback of the top-ranked Tigers, college football’s last remaining unbeaten team.

Henry’s play along with a stout defense earned Alabama a return trip to the College Football Playoff as the No. 2 seed.

After a wildly unpredictable race, the Heisman Trophy finalists were named on Monday: Derrick Henry, Christian McCaffrey and Deshaun Watson.

The victor of the Heisman Trophy will be announced on Saturday, Dec. 12 at the Best Buy Theater in NY. Since 2000, 13 of the 15 winners have been quarterbacks.

His signature “Heisman moment” came in early November when he won the duel of SEC running backs against LSU’s Leonard Fournette in romping for 210 yards and three TD’s on 38 carries against the Tigers. Watson had 289 yards passing, 131 rushing and scored five touchdowns in Clemson’s ACC title game win. Finalists are merely named based on the closeness of the voting. The Heisman trophy, given to the player voted as the best in college football, brings with it a long legacy and history of some of the greatest players to ever step foot on the collegiate gridiron.

The junior broke Herschel Walker’s single-season SEC rushing record and sits at 1,986 yards and 23 touchdowns with potentially two games remaining in his season. He sat out last season after transferring to Oklahoma, where he has thrown for an average of 282.4 yards per game this season while completing 68.6 percent of his passes.

Derrick Henry made a quick impression on his Alabama teammates upon arriving on campus as a coveted prospect with everything from his hardcore weight room workouts to those middle-of-the-night pushup sessions. Watson’s knee injury late in his freshman season, which required season-ending surgery, makes it an even more remarkable journey.

While Henry is the prototypical power runner, McCaffrey is all about elusiveness and versatility. McCaffrey broke Barry Sanders’ 27-year-old record for all-purpose yards during the contest. In his second season with the Cardinal he has rushed for 1847 yards and 8 touchdowns and caught four more touchdowns while gaining 540 yards in the air.

He would be Stanford’s second Heisman victor, joining Jim Plunkett in 1970. He has gained at least 380 yards in each of his last six games and has guided the Clemson offense to a record nine straight games with at least 500 yards total offense. Gerhart finished second behind Ingram in ’09 and Andrew Luck came in second to Cam Newton (2010) and Robert Griffin III (2011).

If you can’t get behind a resume like that (keep in mind the statistics have changed just a little since the North Carolina game), I don’t know what you do.

For what he means to this team, and given the team is on its way to a playoff and possibly the national championship, he’s the obvious choice to me.

For the season, Watson has 3512 passing yards with 30 passing touchdowns and 11 interceptions.

He would be Clemson’s first Heisman victor.

“He’s excited to show his mom NY, so that was kind of neat”, said Bourret.