Tweet

Christian McCaffrey broke Barry Sanders’ record of all-purpose yards in a single season in 2015.  Many experts said this record would never be broken or even come close to being broken, but McCaffrey did it by putting on a show of versatility.

But did McCaffrey win the Heisman Trophy for the best player in the nation?  No he did not.  The Heisman Trophy was awarded to Derrick Henry, the running back for Alabama.  Now, Henry did help lead his team to the National Championship, but at the time the Heisman was presented no bowl games had even been played.  So we have to base the Heisman off of regular season stats.  And I’m not saying this because Henry did better than McCaffrey in the bowl games because he didn’t.  In the Rose Bowl, the granddaddy of them all, McCaffrey had a 368 all-purpose-yard performance to go along with three touchdowns to lead Stanford to the win.

However, we aren’t going to consider that, but instead just each player’s regular season stats.

McCaffrey ended the regular season with 2,019 rushing yards and eight rushing touchdowns compared to Henry’s performance of 2,219 rushing yards and 28 touchdowns.  Based on those numbers you would easily decide that Henry should win the Heisman, but  football is more than just running the ball, so we must take into account the other aspects of the game.  McCaffrey ended the regular season with 645 receiving yards and six more touchdowns, while Henry only posted a mere 91 receiving yards and no receiving touchdowns. McCaffrey also posted over 1,100 return yards and two punt and kick returns for touchdowns while Henry had zero returns for zero yards.

According to Colin Becht, a writer for Sports Illustrated, “The best argument for Derrick Henry is to imagine his absence.  What would Alabama look like without the 38% chunk of its offense this season that Henry accounted for?” I believe that Alabama, the powerhouse that it is, would have found another workhorse to carry the load, say next year’s starter Bo Scarbrough, who weighs 240 pounds and might have a very similar year to that of Derrick Henry in 2016.

But Stanford or any other program in the nation will never have another Christian McCaffrey.  According to Graham Watson, a sports writer for Yahoo Sports, “McCaffrey should be the Heisman winner because I believe no player has meant more to his team and been more versatile than McCaffrey.”

I couldn’t agree more. His versatility shows he is an all-around great football player and not just good at one facet of the game like Henry.