You Can Be Amazing, But You Can’t Clinch A Heisman In September
Things you can do in September: see the leaves turn, watch a pennant race, think about getting out your Halloween decorations a month early.
Things you can not do in September: lock up a Heisman Trophy.
There are over 90 Heisman winners. But there are far more Heisman dreamers who were prematurely dubbed trophy favorites in September only for their campaigns to go a bit sideways.
This is not to say these September studs all finished with sub-par seasons. Most continued to flourish. It’s just that a quarter of a season does not a Heisman make.
Late-season bias is natural with a voting window set exclusively in early December. Heisman history is teeming with anecdotal late-season heroics. But Heisman winners who stun in November typically have a hearty resume in September, too.
Amazing Septembers are nothing to scoff at. It’s just that they don’t automatically beget a Heisma, or Heisman finalist status. Or even that many votes.
Ask Geno Smith.
Smith entered 2012 among the top Heisman favorites. He had thrown for a gazillion yards in 2011 — 4,385 to be exact — while leading Missouri to a 10-3 record which culminated with a 70-33 thrashing of Clemson in the 2012 Orange Bowl. Smith’s regular season, however, wasn’t good enough even for a 2011 Top 10 Heisman finish.
The Mountaineers opened 2012 ranked No. 11 and proceeded to win its first five games. Game 4 was an epic 70-63 win over No. 25 Baylor in which Smith threw for 656 yards on 45-of-51 passing and eight scores. Calling them video game numbers is even an insult.
Quoting the Associated Press recap of the game: “How wild was it? Smith, the early Heisman front-runner, had more TD passes than incompletions (six). He finished 45 of 51 and still doesn’t have an interception this season. ‘Can you please tell me how you can improve on that?’ West Virginia coach Dana Holgorsen said.”
Smith got West Virginia to 5-0 the next week with a 48-45 win over No. 11 Texas with a modest (for him) 285-yard, four-TD performance.
And then reality — or maybe just fate — struck. West Virginia dropped its next five games, two by one point, three in blowouts. Smith’s numbers remained strong in the losing streak, averaging 273 yards passing and 2.2 TDs with five interceptions. He finished the regular season with 4,004 passing yards and 40 TDs, but the damage was done and Smith, again, finished outside the Top 10 in the 2012 Heisman balloting.
Short of a perfect season, Smith likely would have had a hard time holding off eventual Heisman winner Johnny Manziel and his magical Texas A&M season, but in September, we hardly knew.
Michigan QB Denard Robinson experienced something similar in 2010. The first-year sophomore starter exploded into the national consciousness with a massive performance to lead the Wolverines to a 28-24 comeback at Notre Dame.
The dual-threat dynamo, in his second game as a starter, generated a Michigan record 502 yards in total offense, including a then-Notre Dame Stadium record 87-yard TD run. Robinson, who finished with 258 yards rushing and 244 yards passing, capped the amazing effort with a game-winning 2-yard scoring run.
Robinson eventually got Michigan to 5-0 before a mid-season three-game loss streak and two late losses. Still, Robinson managed to finish sixth in the 2010 Heisman balloting during a season in which a different first-year starter won the trophy, Auburn’s Cam Newton.
As a 2011 junior, Robinson had Michigan 6-0 en route to a 10-2 regular season, but the magic was gone and he finished outside the Heisman Top 10. As a 2012 senior, he was still running wild, but was ultimately replaced at QB.
In the unofficial category of best college football seasons not to end with a Heisman Trophy, Peyton Manning’s 1997 campaign is an all-timer. The Tennessee legend was already a two-time Heisman Top 8 finisher before his senior season, which opened with a gauntlet of matchups against Texas Tech, at UCLA and Florida, Ole Miss, Georgia and at Alabama.
His September only featured three games, so we’ll include his Oct. 4 contest. In those first four affairs, he averaged 332 yards passing with 12 TDs, leading the Vols to wins over Texas Tech, UCLA and Ole Miss with a road loss at Florida, Tennessee’s only regular-season loss of the year.
But in Michigan, a two-way senior star who also returned kicks named Charles Woodson was just getting started. His September was modest, by Heisman winner standards, but the highlights started pouring in of Woodson’s amazing interceptions, punt returns and key catches. And, well, Manning’s mere quarterbacking greatness was no longer enough.
There is no grand unifying theory of momentum that we’re aware of, but it sure feels like momentum lost in sports is immediately gobbled up by another team or player.
Oklahoma QB John Mateer was in his first year as a Sooner in 2025 after an electrifying 2024 at Washington State. His one season in the Palouse generated Heisman buzz and, ultimately, offers to transfer to higher profile schools like, say, OU.
Mateer got off to a banging start in Norman last year, winning his first four starts as a Sooner, including a 24-13 win over Michigan in Week 2 and a 24-17 win against Auburn to close out September.
But Mateer suffered a broken bone in his right hand during the win in Week 4. The dual-threat QB stayed in the entire game against the Tigers despite the injury and was firmly entrenched in September Heisman chatter. The injury, however, cost him a game and, upon his return soon after, his effectiveness. You can hardly blame Mateer, who was fighting through a slowly healing broken hand for his team, but the Heisman attention went elsewhere.
Most transferred to another QB in his first year at a school that featured similarly shaded white and red colors, Indiana’s Fernando Mendoza. And the rest is history.
Mateer is back this season, as are dozens of candidates who will finish this weekend with September resumes to be proud of.
But as we know, that’s only part of the 2026 Heisman story.
•
As a weekly reminder, college football fans can now vote on a daily basis at hopefuls.heisman.com and have their vote count at the end of the season. The fan vote uses a season-long weighted model, developed in partnership with the Carnegie Mellon Sports Analytics Center, that gives greater weight to votes cast later in the year as the body of work grows and conference races intensify.
