Keenan Reynolds’ Heisman Trophy hopes went up like smoke in the night. It was no fault of his own, but that is of little comfort to Navy’s distinguished quarterback after a loss to the Houston Cougars.
Reynolds had a career day throwing the ball on Friday. He compiled 312 passing yards and he rushed for 84 as well. The problem was that Houston made the rest of Navy look mediocre at best. Aside from Reynolds, Navy’s vaunted rushing attack managed to put up only 63 yards against a Cougar defense that figured it out at the end of the first quarter and never let up. Reynolds piloted the Midshipmen to 31 points, but it was no match for the 555 yards and 52 points put up by Houston.
More than that, it was hard to see Reynolds in the best possible light, if only because the rest of Navy looked bad around him. In a tight Heisman race, where any reason for dropping a Group of Five contender is enough, quarterbacking a loss is all that was needed to kick Reynolds to the side.
The last time the Heisman Trophy went to a player from a school that (today) isn’t in a Power 5 conference was Navy’s Roger Staubach in 1963. For a player from a Group of Five school to win the trophy today, he and his team would need to be as close to perfect as they could to even have a shot. Navy’s loss to Notre Dame didn’t hurt the Midshipmen much because of how good the Irish are, but losing by double digits to Houston ends any chance of Reynolds winning.
That’s a shame, because Reynolds has been the most important player in college football in regard to his team. He tied Montee Ball for the most career touchdowns in FBS football with 83, and that doesn’t even count the 29 he’s accumulated through the air. (Moreover, he has a great chance of breaking one if not both of those records versus Army on Dec. 12.) Being tasked with the job of replacing the legendary Ricky Dobbs (with Kriss Proctor playing in the 2011 season but not being able to lead Navy to considerable heights), Reynolds made the job his own and ran the triple option better than anyone has this century… and maybe ever will.
The Heisman has never been a career-achievement award, but if there ever was a time to forgive one game, award a player for a fantastic career, and actually back up the phrase we hear so much in college football these days — body of work — it’s this year. It’s Reynolds.
It won’t happen.
Reynolds’ award will, at best, be an invitation to New York as a finalist to sit in the same row with the eventual Heisman winner. He’s rushed for over 1,000 yards each of the last three seasons and thrown for at least 650 yards all four years, and he still has two games left to play this year, one more in the regular season.
In a season when no single player has stood out all year as Marcus Mariota did in 2014 or Johnny Manziel did in 2012, Reynolds simply being on the wrong side of the result in Houston is enough to crush his Heisman hopes.
It shouldn’t be that way, but it is.
