2 reasons Saquon Barkley isn’t a Heisman finalist

Remember Saquon Barkley? Maybe he’s been off your radar. His Penn State team came into the season with Playoff aspirations and an electric offense that had the dynamic running back as its focal point. But as Penn State fell just short of expectations, Barkley slowly become an afterthought.

The transcendent talent certainly had an excellent season, but it just wasn’t Heisman good, especially in a season with three no-doubt finalists.

There are two main reasons he’s not in New York City.

The first thing voters will always look at, when it comes to RBs: total rushing yards, whether that’s the right number to look up or not. Barkley ended up with 1,134, No. 34 in the country and behind four quarterbacks, including finalist Lamar Jackson.

Our season preview broke down Penn State’s offense like this:

If I hadn’t watched a single second of Penn State and only had the stats in front of me, I would reach two broad conclusions:

1. With that many big gains and negative plays, the Nittany Lions either had a running back who danced around far too much or a line that couldn’t block a good Division II front.

2. Relying that much on big plays is not sustainable.

Barkley risks short losses for huge gains, but the eyeballs suggest that the proper answer to Conclusion No. 1 is that the line was still a mess. And its improvement is the key to addressing Conclusion No. 2.

And Barkley has lived up to this rep this season. His penchant for negative rushes has popped up. He’s fifth nationally in rushes over 30 yards with 10, and Penn State’s rushing game (which is almost entirely Barkley and QB Trace McSorley) ranks No. 12 in the country in explosiveness but No. 105 in avoiding stuffed runs.

Despite the explosiveness, he’s averaging only 5.7 yards-per-carry (54th nationally among all players with 100 or more carries), and at 16.6 rushes per game, Penn State isn’t relying on his legs alone to power its offense.

Some of those quiet rushing games included 35 yards on 14 carries against Rutgers, 77 on 18 against Maryland, and 56 on 20 against Indiana. The 211-yard explosion against Iowa was huge, and the 108-yard effort against Michigan was impressive. But the not-great rushing performances against bad teams factor into his body of work.

Our Penn State blog, Black Shoe Diaries, saw the Heisman shutout coming earlier this season when the rushing numbers started trailing off:

Unless Penn State’s offensive line gets much better very quickly, the path for Barkley’s Heisman campaign is going to be through the air. Although offensive coordinator Joe Moorhead has struggled to match the explosiveness that was the calling card of last year’s team, he has done a great job of making Barkley a bigger part of the passing game.

Three players were invited to the Heisman ceremony this season. Sometimes it’s four or five. The Heisman Trust invites only as many players as it deems necessary based on voting results. So Barkley might finish fourth without a trip to New York, but it’ll be a pretty distant fourth.

Heisman voters get to list only three names. Oklahoma’s Baker Mayfield is running away with the award, Louisville’s Lamar Jackson was another obvious finalist, and Stanford’s Bryce Love has much better numbers than Barkley does. If almost every voter listed those three names, then there were few spots left for Barkley.

If you aren’t a Playoff contender, your stats better be otherworldly. Jackson’s and Love’s are. Jackson’s having basically the same season he did last year when he won the award, albeit on a worse team. There’s an argument that his campaign is even better than last year’s. Love is hitting home run after home run on basically one leg due to a hampering ankle injury. Taking into account Love’s 19.75 attempts per game, he’s the most bang-for-buck back by a long shot.

We’ve kinda forgotten about Penn State this season, since its Big Ten title run ended a few weeks early. But the margin between Playoff contender and division champion Penn State is only four points. That’s the combined margin of victory in Penn State’s two losses, one of which was the Ohio State game in which it led by 14 points two separate times.

That margin also bars Barkley’s Heisman chances. If Penn State had been Playoff-good, voters would’ve more fully considered Barkley’s resume. Or if Barkley’s numbers had been astounding, like Jackson’s or Love’s, he could’ve made it anyway.

Penn State played four of the country’s top 25 rushing defenses, first of all.

And his explosiveness is still a thing to behold. Here are his 10 rushes for over 30 yards this season:

His impact is much more noticeable in the kicking game and as a pass-catcher, and that’s something Heisman voters can tend to overlook, when your main job is still running back.

Barkley is second in all-purpose yards per game with 179.5. That’s not quite on the level of Christian McCaffrey last year or San Diego State’s Rashaad Penny this year, but it’s a much better number for capturing his impact than rushing yardage alone.

Both of those runbacks were on the opening kickoff of the game:

He’ll be at home during the Heisman ceremony, but he’s got just as big a stage in the upcoming Fiesta Bowl against Washington.