Christian McCaffrey was very close to winning a Heisman Trophy last season. The fact that he's not even invited back to New York as a Heisman finalist for 2016 is criminal.
McCaffrey won't have a third chance, as the dynamic Stanford do-everything feature back is taking his talents to the NFL, leaving the Cardinal after a spectacular junior season.
BENDER: Ten biggest Heisman misses of all time
As a sensational sophomore scion, McCaffrey was the runner-up to Alabama running back Derrick Henry in '15. Henry edged him out in total voting, 1,832 to 1,539. The first-place votes were Henry 378, McCaffrey 290.
Henry had 1,986 yards rushing and 23 TDs before he added 233 and 5 in two College Football Playoff games, powering the Crimson Tide to the national championship with a big title game against Clemson. McCaffrey, before ripping apart Iowa for 277 yards and two total TDs in the Rose Bowl, had 2,387 yards and 15 combined TDs. After ther bowl, he finished with exactly 1,200 yards off kickoff and punt returns.
There's no doubt Henry beat out McCaffrey more so because his Tide rolled a little more than the playoff-less but still 12-2 Cardinal. In terms of determining who was the "best player in college football", the tiebreaker went to the quality of team, and that's fine.
There is something wrong, however, to believe McCaffrey suddenly wasn't even good enough to be in at least the top five again, when he was a better player in fewer games in '16.
McCaffrey, in 11 games, averaged 173.9 yards from scrimmage with 16 TDs. He accounted for 46 percent of Stanford's entire offense. His scrimmage yards per game dropped from 183.6, but he had more scores.
The difference was one bad game against a CFP-bound Washington team and an injury that knocked him out of the Washington State game and caused him to miss the Notre Dame game. Stanford overall was a weaker team in a weaker Pac-12 as it "settled" for a 9-3 record after a good closing stretch.
That all hurt the perception of McCaffrey overall. But the reality is, looking at how he came back strong from that injury to make up for lost ground in awesome familiar fashion should have warranted him more attention, not less.
But as it tends to happen, the East Coast-bias tends to kick in unless someone is wowing beyond belief in the west. With the exception of undeniable Marcus Mariota or someone from Pete Carroll's Southern California dynasty, the Pacific time zone has been a recent dead zone for Heisman winners. Before quarterback Carson Palmer won in 2002 to re-start a USC run, there was a 21-year West Coast drought.
A Trojan that won after Palmer — but since has had to give his Heisman back — was running back Reggie Bush in '05. When looking at Bush's big numbers post-Rose Bowl, McCaffrey's '16 key offensive stats, down to return yardage were better. That's all while not having the benefit of playing off a team full of future NFL offensive support like Bush did.
Given how crazy everyone was for Bush then, it's seems dowright silly that McCaffrey couldn't win last season. It's sillier how quickly he's become yesterday's news in college football.
IYER: 12 best players to never win the Heisman
Everyone went gaga for Louisville quarterback Lamar Jackson, the favorite, and also loved the uniqueness of Michigan safety turned two-way playmaker Jabrill Peppers. Embracing the elements of newness and surprise is a modern tradition for Heisman voters, much like it is with the Holllywood Foreign Press and the Golden Globes around this same time every year.
That was indeed responsible for giving McCaffrey his meteoric rise last year, but it also hurt him on the follow-up. Then again, the process presumed Clemson quarterback DeShaun Watson was a shoo-in for a return trip well over McCaffrey, and Oklahoma quarterback Baker Mayfield was worthy to move up from a fourth-place finish to displace him all together.
Watson's junior production is amazingly close to what he did as a sophomore second runner-up, with more proflic passing numbers pre-playoff. But he's had a drop in efficiency and accuracy and didn't produce close to the same as a runner. But Watson's intangibles, leading Clemson to the playoffs as a marked team in the ACC and out-shooting Jackson without his best in the same game, make him deserving of a return, and really, the win.
Mayfield over McCaffrey is the bigger issue. This is somehow assuming Mayfield was so much better than he was last season, and Sooners were that much better than the Cardinal. Mayfield, preying on an defensively inept weak Big 12 — to the point pundits saw its repeat conference winner as a playoff afterthought — passed in the same neighborhood of his '16 numbers. He too dropped off as a runner, and was terrible in his one tough test against Ohio State.
Oklahoma is 10-2. Stanford is 9-3. So not much difference there.
Playing off the newness and surprise, Oklahoma wide receiver Dede Westbrook is A-OK being a finalist, because he has the dazzling prodcution. But given the senior's breakout '16 was critical to making Mayfield look better than he was, the Sooners QB spot should have gone to McCaffrey instead.
McCaffrey is the fourth Stanford player since '82 to finish second in the Heisman race, joining John Elway, Toby Gerhart and Andrew Luck. Luck doubled down on the misfortune, as a runner-up in both '10 and '11. Jim Plunkett in '70 remains the program's sole winner.
McCaffrey, like Luck, is bound for a special NFL career, and thanks to drawing the awful run defense of North Carolina in the Sun Bowl, will still leave Palo Alto on a very high note. But like Luck, he earned at least another shot to attend, even with lesser shot of victory.
Giving that return respect for a smaller-school, old-school back as dominant as McCaffrey? Now that would have been new and surprising. Both the numbers and eye test also say it was the right thing to do.
