unfortunately for him with 3 losses you need to be a stats phenom, which he is, but also not have a cfp contender have a stellar year themselves. nix, as loathsome as this is to admit, is having a stellar year. not near as good as daniels, but nix is about to set an ncaa record for comp%, has great yds, great td/in ratio, and an all around great year.
daniels, imo, is pretty clearly the best player in cfb this season, like tebow in 07. but there wasn't a title contending team with a great player that year, either.
It's true that Tebow was a fall-back winner in 2007. Some may not remember, but the Heisman was Dennis Dixon's to lose (Oregon) until he got injured for the season. I don't remember Lamar Jackson compared to other contenders, or Manziel. They're not the only 3-loss winners, though. I believe RG3 was as well, and Baylor wasn't competing for anything in 2011.
I think you're right that there needed to be no other viable candidate this year. What I think is egregious is that if you consider their numbers, there really aren't any other viable candidates. Nix will lead comp%, and that's it. Strictly looking at passing, Daniels beats out Nix in pretty much every category you can think of (see chart above), against a much tougher schedule. In the 10% of categories he isn't ahead of Nix or Penix, he's right there behind them with the other guy trailing appreciably....meaning that even in the few categories he doesn't win outright, he's the best combination of the categories he doesn't lead compared to the other two.
And that's just strictly as a passer. Then you factor in his rushing production and he laughably separates himself among the three.
As noted above, his numbers would be Heisman all-time bests in numerous categories. He's a Heisman winner among Heisman winners. We're talking about a guy who exceeded Joe Burrow's 2019 season, the biggest landslide winner in Heisman history. They want to distinguish between them because Burrow.....had a competent defense?
To me, it seems like the drastic difference in production should easily outweigh the difference in losses, but that doesn't seem to be the sentiment, far as I can tell.
Voters who actually watched the games and don't just look at numbers should see something similar. Forget the stats....if you've watched all three, imagine putting Daniels on Washington's team.....they'd still be undefeated. Put him on Oregon and the Ducks would be undefeated (the voters should have seen Nix had the chance to pull out the win against Washington but he derped and couldn't do it....he failed in his only big game, whereas none of Daniels' losses can be pinned on him). Put either Penix or Nix on LSU and LSU would have AT LEAST one more loss, because no way does LSU beat Missouri with anyone other than Daniels, they wouldn't have even been in position for a hail mary vs. Ole Miss, and they would've done jack squat against Bama.
I know I'm preaching to the choir, it just mystifies me how glaring the difference between the choices is, and how the trend is in Nix's favor anyway. It's not like Daniels is slightly ahead of them. If that were the case, I'd probably forgive the voters. But it's not even close, and if they fail to reward a literal historic season, well, they suck.
