With a stellar week nine, Caleb Williams is seeing his stock rise in USA TODAY Sports’ latest Heisman rankings.
Caleb Williams took the college football world a month ago when he helped the Oklahoma Sooners overcome an 18 point halftime deficit. He hasn’t looked back, amassing 18 total touchdowns on the season and completing 70.9% of his passes, good for seventh in the nation among quarterbacks with at least 94 dropbacks on the season.
That completion percentage is better than every other quarterback in Heisman contention for 2021. And believe it or not, Caleb Williams is in Heisman contention.
In USA TODAY Sports college football analyst Paul Myerburg’s latest Heisman rankings, Caleb Williams has moved up one spot from last week to fifth.
The freshman phenom keeps stacking monster Saturdays, the latest a six-touchdown performance in the Sooners’ rout of Texas Tech. In 99 attempts since replacing Spencer Rattler midway through the Red River Shootout against Texas, Williams has thrown for 1,097 yards and 14 touchdowns against one interception. – Myerburg
Last week, Caleb Williams was ranked sixth in Myerburg’s rankings, but his performance over Tech gave him a bump over Cincinnati’s Desmond Ridder and Wake Forest’s Sam Hartman.
Williams is the highest graded quarterback through week nine of the season according to Pro Football Focus. Things appear to be heating up for the true freshman quarterback who just threw for 402 yards and six touchdowns in an offensive domination of Texas Tech last Saturday.
His passer rating of 142 (NFL) is second only to Coastal Carolina’s Grayson McCall.
At this point, games played might be the only thing keeping Caleb Williams from being higher on lists for college football’s most prestigious award.
Even if Williams doesn’t end up a finalist for the Heisman Trophy, what he’s done in such a short time is pretty remarkable. He’s helped transform the Oklahoma Sooners back into the big-play offense that we’ve grown accustomed to.
Oklahoma’s scored 50 points in three of their last four games since Williams took over as the starting quarterback. Though they were blanked in the first half of their win against Kansas, Williams orchestrated a 35 point second half to help Oklahoma to the win.
The following month of the season will tell the tale for Caleb Williams and the Oklahoma Sooners. How he and OU perform in games against Baylor, Iowa State, and Oklahoma State will go a long way toward getting Williams to New York and the Sooners into the College Football Playoff.
Though they’re on a bye week, the stakes are higher now than they’ve been all season after the College Football Playoff committee ranked the Oklahoma Sooners eighth in their initial playoff rankings.
The Oklahoma Sooners will need “Superman” to be heroic over the final three games of the regular season and the Big 12 championship. Caleb Williams will have plenty of opportunities to create his signature Heisman moment over the last month of the season. The question is, will it be enough to put him in serious contention for the Heisman.
After the bye, we’ll find out.
