Louisville football: Who has best chance at winning Heisman Trophy?
By Jacob Lane
Louisville football has three legitimate Heisman contenders.
The thought of a Louisville football player ever winning a Heisman at one point in time seemed crazy, but here we are just three weeks away from the start of the 2020 football season and the Cards are being looked at as a team capable of producing a contender for the award.
Actually, according to new odds released late this week the Louisville football program has three players who are legitimate contenders for this year’s Heisman trophy.
The award was all but considered to be two way battle between Ohio State’s Justin Fields and Clemson’s Trevor Lawrence with a handful of others competing for the remaining slots in New York. But after the Big Ten cancelled their fall season and the Pac 12 followed, the race was blown wide open.
Lawrence will easily be the favorite following two big seasons as a starter for Clemson, with his teammate Travis Etienne joining in pursuit along with fellow ACC QB Sam Howell and numerous others.
I know for a fact I was one of the earliest writers to predict that Cunningham would be a dark-horse Heisman candidate, so to his odds drop from 150-1 to 30-1 before the major conferences announced not to play weren’t surprising to me.
However, now with two major conferences out of the picture the odds of Micale Cunningham have only risen while two other Cardinals are now potential candidates for the award in Tutu Atwell and Javian Hawkins. You’d be hard pressed to find a list that included any sorts of odds for the two skill position players, but now both players are beginning to trend upward.
Unless one of Louisville’s three contenders have a Lamar Jackson-esque blow up season where they put up astronomical statistics out of nowhere (which I think all three could capable of) then it’s likely the furthest they’ll go is to New York as a finalist.
Still, that is a feat in and of itself to be proud of and an accomplishment that is possible for all three players. With that being said, here are our predictions on who has the best chances to win the award from Louisville.