By Matt Ferris
Now that the 2018 college football regular season has officially ended, all eyes are looking ahead to the College Football Playoff and the Heisman Trophy Presentation.
With the CFP basically set, the biggest question in college football is: “Who will win the Heisman?”
We have seen many players emerge as stars and put their name in the Heisman conversation, like Will Grier of West Virginia, Dwayne Haskins of Ohio State, and Trevor Lawrence of Clemson. But two names stand out the most in the Heisman watch – Kyler Murray of Oklahoma and Tua Tagovailia of Alabama.
Many experts agree that the Heisman is now a two-horse race, and one of these great quarterbacks will take home the trophy.
Both teams have been exceptional this season and are in the CFP conversation, so the only remaining question, “Who has the better stats?”
Murray’s statistics are much more impressive when compared with Tagovailia’s.
He has more passing yards, more rushing yards, more passing touchdowns, more rushing touchdowns, and a better pass completion percentage than the Alabama quarterback.
So, one might think Murray is a lock to win the Heisman since his numbers are much better.
However, there is just one problem.
Tagovailia’s team is so dominant that he hardly ever plays the fourth quarter.
Alabama is blowing teams out so badly that Coach Nick Saban removes the first team offense from almost every game and puts in his backups.
So if Tagovailia is only playing three quarters in every game, obviously Murray is going to have better stats.
However, if you compare the stats of both quarterbacks in just the first three quarters of every game this year, Murray still has the better stats.
In just quarters one through three, Murray has more passing yards, more rushing yards, more rushing touchdowns, and a higher completion percentage. But Tagovailia has more passing touchdowns, more total touchdowns, and is responsible for more total points.
Taking out the fourth quarter from their stats certainly levels the playing field a little more, but Murray is still the clear-cut favorite.
He has been much more impressive this season, leading an Oklahoma team that has absolutely no defense to a record of 11-1.
This season, he has 3,674 passing yards and an additional 853 yards on the ground. He has thrown for 37 touchdowns and ran for 11 more for a total of 48 and has only turned the ball over seven times.
These are some of the most impressive numbers we have seen in college football in a long time.
Murray clearly deserves the Heisman Trophy and it would be an absolute travesty if the voting
committee chooses to award Tagovailia instead of him.