The picture of who’s in the running to win the Heisman Trophy is becoming more clear as the college football season heads into November. Oregon quarterback Bo Nix has made himself a legitimate contender after the Ducks’ 35-6 road win over No. 13 Utah.
Voters usually look for that one “Heisman Moment” for the eventual winner, this may be the year where that moment doesn’t come, but instead, consistency over the entire regular season wins out and becomes that moment unto itself.
And while Nix still has time to generate that moment, his consistency hasn’t been matched by other so-called contenders. He hasn’t had any games where he has thrown for under 245 yards and two touchdowns. Oregon still has contests with USC, Oregon State, and possibly Washington once again.
It always helps to have your coach in your corner and Nix definitely has Dan Lanning as a pretty good spokesman.
“I’m going to say it again, Bo Nix is the best quarterback in the nation just to be really clear. I don’t think there’s any doubt about it,” the Oregon second-year coach said. “It’s not just the plays he makes on the field … I think a lot of people talk about chasing stats and all these things, this guy just plays consistently. He gets us in the right calls, he comes to the sideline and helps us through adjustments. He tells us what he sees. He’s an unbelievable person. When you have a good team like we have, and we have a quarterback like we have, that’s a special recipe for success.”
Perhaps more important is to have your fellow teammates have your back and sing your praises. Center Jackson Powers-Johnson says Nix is just one of those special players.
“He’s great. I went up to him and gave him a hug and said ‘thank you’,” Powers-Johnson said. “We (the offensive line) do our part to make the offense go, but I’m going to give all the credit to Bo. He’s an amazing quarterback, an amazing person and an amazing leader. Hopefully there’s more media talk for Heisman because he deserves it.”
Like a good player and overall person, Nix is downplaying the Heisman talk and for him, it’s all about the team.
“I think that’s something that comes with playing really good team football and so my ultimate goal is to do whatever I can to win games. The guys in the locker room know that I want to win a championship,” Nix said. “We’re gonna do everything we can to go back to work on Monday to do that because we got it right in front of us. We can really feel it. That’s all we want to take care of. So all of this really is just gonna be chattering and talking noise, and we got to make sure that we don’t get distracted by it, myself included, and I’m just gonna go to work to win games.”
Oregon has done its share of winning games, going 7-1 overall and California is next on the schedule where Nix might have that Heisman moment. More likely, however, he’ll complete 75 percent of his passes, throw for 285 yards and three or four touchdowns.
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