Manning vs. Klubnik: The Five Categories of Heisman Contender

Ask someone who’s going to win the Heisman Trophy this year, and you’ll usually get one of three answers. There are exceptions—people backing their favorite team’s featured offensive player, people trying to get smart and identify a sleeper (that’ll be us later)—but most folks will tell you either Arch Manning, Jeremiah Smith, or Cade Klubnik. Are those the three favorites? What should we think about this Manning generation anyway?

Last year, we explained that Heisman voters’ decisions can usually be explained with a five-category progression, kind of like a quarterback’s reads in the pocket. Is there a candidate in the first category? No? On to the second. Is there a candidate there? No? On to the third. Rarely does the progression get to the fifth category, but it does happen sometimes, even in the modern era. Mark Ingram won a Heisman Trophy. He was worthy, but he was unusual. He’s in the fifth category.

What are these categories? In order:

• Category 1: Transcendent quarterbacks. Last year, we included six of the previous twenty Heisman winners in this category, ranging from Tim Tebow to Johnny Manziel to Joe Burrow.
• Category 2: Transcendent players. We put Devonta Smith in this category last year, alongside Reggie Bush, but I’m not so sure Smith wasn’t really a Category 5 Heisman winner who played in a very strange mini-era (i.e., Covid). Either way, Travis Hunter has joined this group.
• Category 3: Great QBs on title contenders. From Matt Leinart to Baker Mayfield, this category has some strong Heisman winners. It also has some Heismans by default. Bryce Young was a great college quarterback, but you didn’t exactly tune in to see what he would do.
• Category 4: Great QBs on non-title contenders. Caleb Williams and Jayden Daniels were anomalies, but with a sparsity of great QBs with real title hopes, they each pretty deservedly brought a trophy home.
• Category 5: Great players on title contenders. This is where you get to Ingram, and to Derrick Henry, and maybe to Devonta Smith. Great is not transcendent. But it’s still really, really good.

These categories are helpful, at least for me, when it comes to framing the race. Jeremiah Smith could be great, but it’ll take either transcendence or a weirdly bad group of QBs for him to join the Heisman House ahead of the 2026 season. Cade Klubnik is an easy name now, but it’s unlikely he’ll transcend. His best hope is to land in Category 3, and it’s likelier that even with a spectacular year, he’s a Category 4 guy.

All of that brings us to Manning. Arch Manning. The belle of the 2025 college football ball.

We’ve spent a lot of words the last eight months on how little Steve Sarkisian seemed to trust Manning last season. We’ve also spent some explaining that Manning is not stylistically a Manning. Football-wise, he’s somewhere between Trevor Lawrence and Riley Leonard. Where he falls depends on how well he can refine his passing and decision-making. The man’s a very good runner, provided he can hold onto the ball. He’s got a cannon, but there’s a possibility that he doesn’t know how to use it.

To me, this is enough to make Manning the Heisman favorite. The Heisman doesn’t go to the best football player. Sometimes it does, but like so many other trophies in football, it’s an award for offensive skill positions, mostly quarterback. It’s unlikely that Arch Manning is the best college football player in the country this year. But it’s very possible he’ll play well, and if he does play well, Texas will be a national championship contender, and if he does play well, the style in which he does that will lend itself more towards transcendence than Klubnik’s style or Carson Beck’s.

Last year, we went through and listed candidates in each category, and I don’t want to do that this year because when it came to transcendence, the line was a weird one to draw. Kyron Drones had a chance to be transcendent. Dillon Gabriel didn’t. Gabriel was obviously better, but we set ourselves up to look like idiots, which I guess kind of makes us idiots. I don’t want to talk about how LaNorris Sellers and John Mateer could be transcendent but Beck and Drew Allar will probably top out at great. If there’s a transcendent quarterback, it’s likeliest to be Manning. If Manning doesn’t transcend, Klubnik will probably be good enough to establish a floor at Category 3 or 4. There are plenty of quarterbacks who can win the Heisman, but which ones join the conversation depends largely on what Manning does and on which teams enter the playoff having earned a real title shot.

What I do want to do is offer a few names in Category 2 and Category 5.

Category 2 (potential transcendent players):

Jeremiah Smith’s the obvious one in Columbus, but I’m not sure Caleb Downs doesn’t have a comparable shot. The possibility is high enough that Downs puts up gaudy numbers on turnovers coupled with some outrageous highlights in the return game. It’s not high, but it’s high enough.

Anthony Hill Jr. and Colin Simmons are similarly intriguing on the defensive side of the ball. Manti Te’o was aided by the tragic death of his girlfriend (it was real to him, you jerks), but he did put together a serious Heisman campaign as a front-seven player. Hill and Simmons aren’t as deep in the trenches as Clemson’s defensive studs, and they’ll have more opportunities to impress, playing more and better top-end competition than the Tigers will (despite some admirable Clemson scheduling, to give credit where it’s due). College football discourse is getting smarter, too. Trench stars are getting more recognition than they used to. Which brings us to…

Category 5 (potential great players on national championship contenders):

Joe Alt. Now, Joe Alt isn’t going to win the Heisman this year. In fact, Joe Alt will never win the Heisman. Joe Alt was drafted to the NFL in 2024. But midway through last season, Alt was getting cult buzz as a potential Offensive Rookie of the Year. He didn’t come close to winning it, but he did finish seventh in the voting. So did Tyler Linderbaum in 2022. The offensive line breakthrough is coming. One of these years, the mainstream is going to realize that offensive line is second only to quarterback when it comes to the most impactful positions. Limiting the scope to the college game, I think teams would rather have a good line than a good QB. There are five guys on the line, so that’s part of it, but it’s where college football games are won.

A lineman winning the Heisman is extraordinarily unlikely in the short and medium-term future. It would take a paucity of strong quarterbacking for this to become a possibility And yet. There are paths to that paucity. Klubnik’s the least likely to be bad, but if Clemson goes 9–3, will he really get attention? Around him, all the other favorites have major implosion potential. We talked about Manning, but Garrett Nussmeier’s another. Whole lot of fun. Might be great. Might not be. Whole lot of fun.

A lineman winning the Heisman would also require Jeremiah Smith’s stats not leading the wide receiver pack. We talked about Klubnik as the potential floor, guaranteeing a Heisman winner at Category 4 or above. If Klubnik can’t hold that guarantee, Smith’s the likeliest guy to establish a new floor at Category 5. If no one’s transcendent and no quarterbacks are great, the trophy becomes Smith’s to lose.

But Klubnik and Smith are only two people, so for the sake of fun, let’s draw up a scenario. Adjust this and insert Kadyn Proctor at Alabama if you prefer.

Say Notre Dame blows out Miami, Texas A&M, Arkansas, and Boise State, getting to early October at 5–0. Say Texas beats Ohio State but loses at Florida, and that LSU saddles Clemson with a loss but falls victim to Mississippi in Oxford. Say Georgia and Alabama aren’t back to full steam, and say Penn State’s winning but winning ugly. It’s a fairly believable set of circumstances that would leave Notre Dame the standalone #1 team a little less than halfway into the season.

Now.

Say Notre Dame’s doing this with a multi-pronged attack centered on the running game. But! Say Notre Dame isn’t doing it all through Jeremiyah Love. Say Jadarian Price is matching Love for yardage, or that Aneyas Williams is vulturing touchdowns near the goal line, or that CJ Carr’s causing headaches for some vulnerable but respected defenses. (Texas A&M’s should be good. I don’t know about the rest of ‘em.)

Could someone like Anthonie Knapp win the Heisman Trophy?

It’s a crazy suggestion, but if you’re going to name a sleeper for the sake of naming a sleeper, there are two ways to do it. The first is to pick a quarterback like Rocco Becht, a good quarterback with a believable chance to go 12–1. The second is to figure out how wacky the Heisman situation could possibly get without crossing into real unbelief. I think the Knapp Heisman is our wackiest semi-believable scenario.

Again, my pick is Manning. We’re pretty big Manning doubters, but the guy is the likeliest quarterback in the country to, in the eyes of the public, transcend. He has some incredible tools. He’ll get more credit for his performance than similar players. He’s training under a good quarterback coach in Sark, and I’d guess there are worse guys to study under than Quinn Ewers as an underclassman.

But if we’re doing this for fun, give me Knapp.

No Knapp sacks. (We’ll work on the catchphrase part.)

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