Over the past three years, the Big Ten hasn’t just ended the SEC’s run of national championship dominance; it has started a run of its own. Three different titles from three different programs give the Big Ten a strong case as the best conference in college football since the true beginning of the NIL and Transfer Portal era. And after Fernando Mendoza’s Heisman Trophy season in 2025, those championships aren’t the only feather in the conference’s cap.
Before Mendoza, the Big Ten had not produced a Heisman Trophy winner since Ohio State’s Troy Smith won it in 2006. During that nearly two-decade drought, the SEC produced nine Heisman Trophy winners, and even if you count the newly added members for each conference, the SEC’s lead actually grows to 12-2.
That balance of power has shifted, though, and not only can the Big Ten produce the best teams in the country, but it can pump out the best players. So, what if the league were to go back-to-back with Heisman Trophy winners? Who would be the favorites out of the Big Ten?
Well, the betting odds at FanDuel Sportsbook has Notre Dame’s CJ Carr as the favorite at +750, Texas QB Arch Manning right behind at +800, and Ole Miss’s Trinidad Chambliss at 11-1 odds before you get to Ohio State QB Julian Sayin at 12-1 as the co-betting favorite out of the Big Ten with Oregon’s Dante Moore and Mendoza’s replacement at Indiana, Josh Hoover.
However, I’m not simply going to lean on betting odds to rank the Heisman favorites out of the Big Ten. Instead, I’ll rank the 10 Big Ten players I think have the best chance to win the Heisman Trophy this season.
The Heisman Trophy, at least theoretically, is supposed to be awarded to the best player in college football. I feel really comfortable saying that Jeremiah Smith is the best player in college football this season, and I don’t expect much pushback at all about that opinion.
As a sophomore, he became a higher-volume receiver for Ohio State, catching 87 passes while sharing the field with Carnell Tate again, but his yards per reception fell from 17.3 in 2024 to 14.3 in 2025. He was still massively productive, but the transition from Will Howard to Julian Sayin brought a more risk-averse approach from the quarterback position, and Brian Hartline’s offense was not quite to the level of Chip Kelly’s.
There’s reason to believe that this season, Smith’s efficiency will tick back up, and that’s beyond him simply being more physically gifted than everybody else on the field with him and Sayin taking another step. Ohio State already began to lean on more 12-personnel with tight ends Max Klare and Will Kacmarek last season, and though they both left for the NFL, the arrival of Arthur Smith as offensive coordinator should bring even more two-tight-end looks and a more well-designed run game.
Arthur Smith will dare defenses to put bigger bodies on the field and load up to stop the run, which should open things up for Jeremiah Smith a bit more, even if he doesn’t quite have the same level of counterpart at wide receiver with Tate gone.
For much of the season, the Heisman Trophy became a race between Mendoza and Julian Sayin. Sayin ultimately finished fourth in Heisman voting, but for a redshirt freshman season, he was about as good as you could possibly expect. Pinpoint accurate to an elite group of receivers, Sayin led the country with a 77 percent completion percentage and was No. 2 in EPA/dropback.
At 6-foot-1, Sayin doesn’t have elite arm strength to drive the ball into tight windows, and he occasionally wilts under pressure. But those are concerns you list on an NFL scouting report, not things that will prevent Sayin from leading a hyper-efficient offense at the college level. Even last season, he led the country with 23.9 yards per attempt on throws over 20 yards downfield (per PFF). That could be a wide receiver stat, but his 8.1 yards per attempt on pressured dropbacks and 10.2 yards per attempt with 75.2 percent completion percentage on dropbacks over 2.5 seconds represent an underrated creation ability outside of structure.
Sayin will play in plenty of big games, and with the talent around him at Ohio State, he’ll probably win them. He’s just not the best player on his own team, so it’s hard to have him atop the Heisman Trophy power rankings.
I’m higher on Dante Moore as an NFL prospect than I am as a Heisman Trophy candidate. That’s not to say he can’t put up huge numbers in the Oregon offense; he did last year with 3,500 yards and 30 touchdowns. However, he has no rushing ability to add to his case; he can struggle under pressure with a 4.2 percent turnover-worthy play rate and only two “big-time throws” according to PFF, and last year against ranked opponents, he threw 12 touchdowns to eight interceptions.
Those numbers match the film, but there’s so much to like about Moore’s game. He attacks the middle of the field with great touch, accuracy, and anticipation, and has the arm to threaten the entire defense. With a great receiver corps, Oregon’s offense should be elite and help lead the Ducks to the College Football Playoff.
Staying in contention will keep Moore on the Heisman radar, but with offensive coordinator Will Stein leaving for Kentucky this offseason, the transition to Drew Mehringer may not be the smoothest.
Baker Mayfield, Kyler Murray, and Caleb Williams were all great college quarterbacks. Their physical toolkits and pedigree varied pretty significantly, but the one thing those three Heisman Trophy winners had in common was Lincoln Riley. Jayden Maiava likely isn’t a future No. 1 overall pick, but he’s plenty good enough to run the Riley offense at a high level, as he proved last season.
That’s not something every QB can do. Miller Moss didn’t cut it in 2024, but Riley stuck with Maiava rather than dipping into the portal, and Maiava repaid him with 3,711 yards, the fifth most in the country, and 24 touchdowns to 10 interceptions. Maiava led the country in EPA/dropback, and if he can cut down on the turnovers, he could find himself in the mix for the Heisman trophy.
Maiava shows great touch when throwing downfield and understands how to layer the ball when attacking the intermediate area. He led the country in total passing on throws over 20 yards downfield and was eighth in yards per attempt. However, much of that was tied to his dynamic Biletnikoff-winning receiver, Makai Lemon, and his counterpart Jaylin Lane. Maiava, for all his accuracy and decisiveness, tends to throw into tight windows. If his receivers this year can’t pay those throws off, his efficiency will fall, and turnovers, which were already a bit high, will climb.
Bryce Underwood’s true freshman season was far from the debut Michigan fans were hoping for from the five-star. However, in hindsight, the program he entered under Sherrone Moore was far from the ideal circumstances to develop into an elite starting quarterback. Beyond the dysfunction from the top of the program on down, Underwood was thrust into an uninspiring system under offensive coordinator Chip Lindsey and saddled with an unreliable group of wide receivers.
Judging from what we saw last season, it seems that Underwood’s dual-threat ability may have been overstated with Cam Newton comparisons coming out of high school. He’s a fine athlete, but he used his athleticism more to create plays downfield than as a scrambler or in the designed run game. Still, his arm talent is real, and Michigan has a much better chance of tapping into both aspects with Jason Beck bringing his spread offense from Utah with Kyle Whittingham.
The receiver group should be improved; the coaching staff undeniably is, so Underwood should take the next step. How big that step is will determine whether he leaps into the Heisman race and drags Michigan into Big Ten contention along with him.
Josh Hoover is an accurate thrower who delivers the ball quickly from the pocket and has enough arm to threaten every area of the field. That decisiveness, though, tends to lead to turnovers, and despite his low time to throw at 2.54 seconds, he has an 18.6 percent pressure-to-sack rate.
Indiana offensive coordinator Mike Shanahan helped Mendoza clean up his issues, particularly an even more alarming pressure-to-sack rate, so maybe he can do the same for Hoover with an RPO-heavy passing game and big-bodied receivers who can win at the catch point. Still, there’s a difference in the physical skillset Hoover brings to the one Mendoza arrived in Bloomington with, and that dramatically changes the ceiling Hoover can reach with the Hoosiers relative to last year’s Heisman Trophy winner.
Rocco Becht was really never at 100 percent last season for Iowa State, and his numbers reflected it. Dealing with dueling shoulder injuries that he has since addressed in the offseason, Becht threw for nearly 1,000 fewer yards than in 2024 and nine fewer touchdowns. Part of that is a pass-catcher group that lost two Day 2 draft picks, but the injuries were an undeniable factor. His numbers under pressure, which were never great, fell off, and his pressure to sack rate jumped nearly 10 percent.
The rebuilt receiver group followed Becht to Penn State, and now he has a great setup for a bounce-back with a near-identical offensive staff and his top-five pass catchers from last season all on the Nittany Lions roster. Becht likes to take deep shots, and hunting explosives is a good way to put up big numbers, but 62.9 is his career high completion percentage, and that needs to improve to enter the Heisman discussion. A soft Big Ten schedule will give Penn State an outside CFP shot, so with some improvement and better health, he could enter himself into the discussion.
Demond Williams had an interesting offseason. A flirtation with Lane Kiffin and LSU was thwarted by an apparently ironclad NIL agreement with Washington, so he’s back for another season. Listed at 5-foot-11, Williams has real physical limitations, but he’s a dynamic athlete who loves to create with his legs and extend plays to hunt explosives.
Size isn’t the thing that will ultimately hold Williams back. Rather, it’s his highly volatile play-style, which is, of course, dictated by his size, with a 3.21 second time to throw and a 9.0 yard average depth of target. That’s inherently going to create negatives, and without Denzel Boston at wide receiver, probably too many to overcome.
Counting Travis Hunter, who played both ways, there have been five wide receivers who have ever won the Heisman Trophy, and just two this century (Hunter and DeVonta Smith). If there’s going to be a sixth this year, it’s overwhelmingly likely to be Jeremiah Smith. If not Smith, then Cam Coleman, now at Texas, or Malachi Toney at Miami. Even on his own team, Michigan State transfer Nick Marsh has significantly better odds. Still, I couldn’t write this list without including Charlie Becker.
The 6-foot-4, former three-star recruit has seven catches through Week 10 of the regular season. Then, with Elijah Sarratt out against Penn State, Becker dominate with seven catches for 118 yards. From the Penn State game on, he was easily one of the most valuable receivers in the country, hauling in 27 passes for 522 yards and three touchdowns.
Playing with Sarratt and Omar Cooper Jr. and against a slate that included Ohio State, Alabama, Oregon, and Miami, that’s a 12-game pace of 46 catches for 1,164 yards, and five touchdowns. Not Heisman numbers, but ridiculous production considering those circumstances and as the volume ticks up for an elite contest catch player like Becker, he could reasonably threaten to lead the country in receiving yards.
Admittedly, it would be strange for an Illinois transfer quarterback to win it the year after an Indiana QB did the same, but in fairness, Katin Houser is only slotting in at No. 10 in my ranking. Houser put up great numbers at East Carolina in one of the most up-tempo offenses in the country last season. He’ll slow things down under Bret Bielema, but his combination of size, athleticism, and solid arm talent could still be a recipe for success in the Big Ten.
If he were to win it, it would likely come on the back of a high rushing usage in the red zone for the 6-foot-3, 225-pound QB who is tough to tackle around the goalline. Still, he’s a talented player with real upside who could easily have himself in the conversation as a top-five QB in the conference by season’s end.
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