America missed college football's best QB in September. Now, it's Darian Mensah time - USA Today
Let me introduce you to the Heisman Trophy candidate who most recently played a game televised on a channel that also airs “Scrabble.”
No. 3 Miami (Fla.) cruised through a pitiful September schedule, so you might’ve missed quarterback Darian Mensah throwing more touchdown passes than incompletions throughout the season's first month.
Mensah's undefeated team is trouncing opponents by an average of 43 points, and if Mensah keeps this up, he’ll lead Miami to its first ever ACC title.
If the season ended after one month, he’d shatter college football’s record for passer efficiency.
Sounds incredible, right? Too bad nobody’s seen Mensah play yet this season except for the college football sickos, gambling fiends, Miami fans, and Heisman Trophy voters who take the assignment very, very seriously.
If the best player in college football plays one of the worst schedules among Power Four teams, can he still win the Heisman Trophy?
That sounds like one of those, “If a tree falls in the woods” riddles.
In Miami’s last game, Mensah completed 23 of 27 passes in a rout of Central Michigan. The smattering of people who know the CW televises college football, in addition to three hours of “Jack Hanna’s Into the Wild” on Saturdays, might’ve seen some of that performance.
That’s what makes Miami’s upcoming game against Clemson critical to Mensah’s Heisman hopes: Millions of people will actually see him play. That includes award voters who’ve otherwise been glued to Trinidad Chambliss, Jeremiah Smith and Arch Manning.
Clemson is decisively average, but because these are two of the ACC’s top brands, and because this Week 5 lineup of games is particularly weak, Miami-Clemson nabbed ABC’s prime-time slot.
These are the types of platforms from which Heisman campaigns are launched.
“It doesn’t matter what you do (against Mensah). Whether you blitz him or whatever, he don’t get rattled,” Clemson coach Dabo Swinney said while racking his brain trying to figure out how to stop Mensah.
“He knows where everybody on the field is. You can tell he has great recognition. We got our hands, full for sure.”
Here’s what Swinney must have seen while reviewing film of Miami carving up a lineup of overmatched September opponents: Mensah threw more touchdown passes (14) than incompletions (12) throughout the season’s first four games.
You’ve heard of touchdown-to-interception ratio? Well, Mensah is introducing us to touchdown-to-incompletion ratio.
Yes, it’s worth noting Miami’s competition consisted of Stanford, Florida A&M, Wake Forest and Central Michigan, but I’ve known quarterbacks who’d throw more incompletions in a routes-on-air session than Mensah threw in September.
Three of Miami’s first four games occurred on weeknights, when college football’s audience isn’t at its peak. In addition to one Saturday game being relegated to the CW, another was televised on the ACC Network.
In Miami’s toughest game to date, Mensah completed 24 consecutive passes and finished 30 of 34 in a two-score win over Wake Forest on ESPN.
That following night, more than nearly 11 million viewers — that’s nearly five times the audience Miami-Wake Forest received — watched Chambliss kick off his Heisman campaign, as he and his Rebels humbled Lane Kiffin and LSU.
If Miami’s schedule and mediocre TV assignments hamstring Mensah’s chances, he’s still got an ace stashed up his sleeve in Malachi Toney, Miami's wide receiver who catches anything within reach and can turn short passes into big gains.
High-percentage throws that become chunk-yardage gains thanks to a receiver’s run-after-catch ability are a quarterback’s best friend.
“That kid,” Mensah said of Toney, “he’s special.”
Special enough that Miami could wind up with two Heisman candidates. Much of that will come down to how Miami’s stars perform in three games, in particular.
The Heisman can be lost in September. It can’t be won in the season’s first month.
Big games swing Heisman races. Stat-stuffing in roadkill games helps, too. Indiana’s Fernando Mendoza put down the base of his Heisman campaign with some gaudy numbers in blowout wins against Kennesaw State, Indiana State and Illinois in September. He clinched the award by outperforming Ohio State’s Julian Sayin in the Big Ten championship game, while Fox’s Gus Johnson spent the broadcast whipping votes for Mendoza.
ABC won't go that hard for Mensah in an early October game, but this marks the first of three games that will shape Mensah’s candidacy, including a Nov. 7 showdown with Notre Dame and a possible final stroll down the catwalk in December in the ACC title game.
Mensah supplied a gaudy groundwork of stats on the ACC Network and the CW against paycheck opponents, but his campaign begins in earnest once ABC flips on the lights.
Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network's senior national college football columnist. Listen to his podcast, "College Football Unfiltered." Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer.
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