NEW YORK CITY, N.Y. – With the official ceremony a little less than 24 hours away, Alabama Crimson Tide quarterback Bryce Young has emerged as the clear front runner to win college football’s most prestigious award.
One year after backing up 2020 first round pick and current New England Patriots starter, Mac Jones, Young has a chance to add to Alabama’s already historic run of athletic dominance.
Young, a 6’0 194-pound 20-year-old sophomore quarterback from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, via Santa Ana, California, recently swept three of college football’s biggest honors in winning the Maxwell Award, the Davey O’Brien Award and the AP College Football Player Of The Year.
In what has been a recent trend in Heisman voting, the player that wins either—or both—the Maxwell and O’Brien awards has gone on to win the Heisman in New York.
While Young will face some stiff competition from fellow signal-callers in C.J. Stroud from Ohio State and Kenny Pickett from Pitt, thanks to his record-setting season down in Tuscaloosa and helping lead the defending national champions to an SEC title win over top-ranked Georgia, the 2021 Heisman appears to be Young’s to lose.
For the season, Young has completed 68 percent of his passes for 4,322 yards and thrown 43 touchdowns and only four interceptions.
If Young wins the Heisman, he will become the fourth to do so under head coach Nick Saban, joining running backs Mark Ingram (2009), Derrick Henry (2015) and wide receiver DeVonta Smith who won it last year in 2020.