The curse of the returning Heisman Trophy winner
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Ryan McGee, ESPN Senior Writer
It was Dec. 13, 2008, in New York City and time for the three Heisman Trophy finalists to take their place at the front of the room, awaiting the announcement of who would win college football’s most coveted individual award. But one member of the trio was missing. The one who had been there before.
“I was in the bathroom throwing up,” Tim Tebow confessed nearly 16 years later. The Florida quarterback was there not simply as a Heisman finalist, but as the reigning Heisman winner, seeking to become the second two-time Heisman honoree and first in 33 years.
“Honestly, I didn’t think I was going to win it. I wanted to. Of course, I did. But when you watch the ceremony, what do you see? There’s us on the front row, and then there are all the people sitting behind us. Coaches and staff from your school, the president of the university, everyone. My entire family was there. My sister had flown in from a mission trip to Bangladesh, just for this. I knew there was a party after, with all those people, win or lose, and if I’d lost, I’d felt like I had let them all down. That’s why I got sick.”
Tebow didn’t win. He finished third behind a pair of quarterbacks — Oklahoma‘s Sam Bradford and Texas‘s Colt McCoy — despite earning more first-place votes than either of them.
“Winning the Heisman changes your life, there is no doubt about it,” Tebow said. “And people think, ‘Well, you won one, so the pressure’s off on the second.’ But it’s not. It’s a position every college football player wants to be in, but no one knows what that is like until they experience it.”
Caleb Williams is experiencing it now. The fame, hype, expectations, assumptions, all of it. And he’s the first to do so in this still-new NIL era, his Saturday performances — good and bad — punctuated by television commercials starring him. After a hot start to 2023, Williams and USC have scuffled midseason and his Heisman odds have plummeted.
The one person who has hated seeing that more than anyone not dressed in Trojans colors is the only man to have pulled off what increasingly feels impossible. Archie Griffin does not have any desire to be the only member of the two-time Heisman Trophy winner club. Honestly, he’d enjoy the company. It’s been pretty lonely in his corner of the room for the past 48 years.
“I don’t have to be the only two-time winner and I don’t really want to be,” the 69-year-old Ohio State legend said earlier this fall during a conversation about Williams. “I was the first. That’s plenty enough of an honor for me. I can’t wait to welcome the second.”
No. 45 let out a giant laugh with a shake of the head.
“But I’ve been waiting for a long time, haven’t I?”
Griffin, who stood at the front of the room at Downtown Athletic Club in 1974 and 1975, is and has long been, the living, smiling, complete opposite of that awards show scenario. He still returns to New York every December. And he still makes sure to shake the hand of every fellow Heisman Trophy winner in attendance, especially the person who has just become the newest designee as “the outstanding college football player in the United States…”
“In 1978, three years after I won it for the second time, I shook the hand of Billy Sims, who has become a dear friend,” Griffin said. “I thought, ‘Well, he’s a junior just like I was and he has a great team coming back at Oklahoma just like I did at Ohio State, so he will definitely be back here winning this again next year!’ But he didn’t. And there have been so many guys that I was so excited thinking about them maybe getting to experience that thrill a second time, especially now, when so many amazing young talented underclassmen win it. It’s crazy to think about, really.”
Yet, here we are. It would take a miraculous turn for Williams to repeat. Since Jason White finished behind Matt Leinart, this century alone, those who have returned to college for another shot at bronzed glory have gone 0-for-10, eight who went 0-for-1 and Tebow, who went 0-for-2.
But the possibility of claiming two stiff-arming statues didn’t begin with Griffin or begin to be scrutinized with a recent run of elite quarterbacks.
Times change, failure to repeat does not
The first winner of the Heisman Trophy in 1935, one year before the award was named for John Heisman, was Chicago running back Jay Berwanger. He was a senior. And so were the first 10 winners of the award. The junior who snapped that streak in 1945 was Army‘s Doc Blanchard, who in turn became the first candidate for a Heisman repeat. Unfortunately for the fullback known as “Mr. Inside” there was also a “Mr. Outside,” as in teammate Glenn Davis, who took the award in 1946 while Blanchard finished fourth.
Over the Heisman’s first four decades, from Berwanger through Griffin’s second win, those who had hoisted the stiff-armed trophy at season’s end had tallied 35 seniors and only five juniors, the first four failing to repeat, including the great Roger Staubach, who won the award in 1963 and then failed to even crack the top 10 the following year.
Sims came up one spot short in 1979, behind USC’s Charles White. And while the other failed Heisman defenses had been handled with gentlemanly grace, Sims growled his disappointment, saying when asked about his chances of a repeat after a disappointing midseason performance against Texas, “I don’t care. I have one already!” And after White’s Heisman win, Oklahoma head coach Barry Switzer angrily stumped at a news conference, suggesting that NFL scouts vote on the award, not the media, and adding, “Billy’s two years were better than Archie Griffin’s two years that he won the thing!”
“I think when you look back on that stuff now, you realize the pressure that came with it,” Sims recalled during a 2016 chat in his Tulsa barbecue joint sitting beneath a framed Sports Illustrated cover of himself and White playing tug of war with the trophy with the headline: “Hey Man, That’s My Heisman!”
“The year I won it I was kind of an unknown guy who kind of came out of nowhere. I was a great story. The next year, man, every question after every game was, ‘Well, do you think you can win the Heisman again? Charles White just did this and the quarterback at BYU [Marc Wilson] just did that. Did you do enough, Billy?’ I don’t care who you are or how tough you are, you are still a college kid. It’s a lot.”
Sims was just the sixth junior to win the award over 43 years. Of the 43 awarded since, 21 have gone to underclassmen. Of the first seven of those, from Herschel Walker in 1981 through Charles Woodson in 1997, all but one left early for the NFL. The lone holdout was BYU quarterback Ty Detmer, who returned after his record-setting 1990 campaign and battled through injuries to finish third in 1991. As he arrived in New York for the ceremony, he confessed, “I’m here to watch Desmond Howard win it.”
After Woodson, seniors ruled again. White, the Oklahoma quarterback who won in 2003 was a senior, but received an injury waiver to return and defend his Heisman the next year. He lost to Leinart, beginning the current era when a stunning 14 of 18 winners were juniors or younger. That “or younger” is no small development, as a longtime unwritten ageism agreement between Heisman voters was finally put to pasture by voters smitten with Tebow in 2007, the start of a three-year sophomoric streak. Then, in 2012, Texas A&M‘s Johnny Manziel won it as a — deep breath — freshman!
How did none of them win again? Those who came up short of sitting alongside Griffin give us a not-short list of reasons.
The circus
Heisman pressure is very real. So is temptation. Exactly what forms that takes is something that changes and evolves along with every other aspect of being an athlete at a high level college football program, as does how those athletes react to it. Griffin didn’t have to deal with social media or even cable television, but even still, Ohio State head coach Woody Hayes assigned a staff member to help Griffin manage the flood of requests from media and Ohio State supporters because, as Hayes explained at the time, “The kid is too nice. He has to learn how to say no.”
After Manziel became the first freshman winner in 2012, the following offseason, then-Texas A&M athletic director Eric Hyman assigned two staffers to the kid who had just been pinned with the now-infamous Johnny Football moniker — one to manage his schedule and the other to field autograph requests. Alan Cannon, who has overseen A&M’s sports information office since 1999, called his friends at Florida to see how they’d handled Tebow’s repeat performances. “They warned us that this wasn’t going to be about ESPN and CBS anymore,” Cannon recalled. “It would also be about the National Enquirer and TMZ.”
Hyman sat down with Manziel and his family, stating flatly: “Johnny is not a freshman. He’s not a sophomore, junior or senior. He’s a Heisman. We can’t act like this is normal because it’s not.”
As we know now, Hyman was a prophet. Manziel spent his entire Heisman defense becoming notorious, from exploding cigar-smoking party Twitpics to a pay-for-autographs scandal that nearly cost him his eligibility for the season. By the time he threw for 3,732 yards and 27 touchdowns — a 313-yard, three-touchdown improvement over his Heisman year — he lost by a whopping 1,501 points to another redshirt freshman, Florida State‘s Jameis Winston.
Winston stated at ACC preseason media days in the summer of 2014: “If I get Manziel disease, I want all of you to smack me in the head with your microphones.”
The reality is that he already had. He won the 2013 award despite 13% of voters left him off their ballots completely, due to a sexual assault investigation that ended with no charges filed only nine days before he became the youngest Heisman winner. Winston would also lead FSU to the 2013 national title. Then he proceeded to crash through a 2014 Heisman follow-up campaign that is still remembered less for football and more for questions about the handling of the sexual assault allegations, crab legs allegedly stolen from a grocery store in April 2014, and a bizarre midseason student center tabletop screaming incident that resulted in a half-game suspension for the biggest game of the season against Clemson.
It all resulted in a sixth-place showing behind Oregon‘s Marcus Mariota, the worst Heisman finish for a uninjured returning winner.
“I think in the decade since then, we have learned a lot about how to handle these things better, whether it’s a coach or a player or an entire athletic department,” Jimbo Fisher, Winston’s coach at FSU and now at A&M, said when asked about then versus now. “I know that the players handle the spotlight better, because now the great ones, they have been in the spotlight since they were kids, when you really think about it. But I don’t care who you are or your background or whatever, fame is fame. And being famous is hard.”
As Hyman recalled it in relation to Manziel: “At the end of the day, it’s a kid who’s trying to become a grown-up. They all are. You can’t babysit them night and day. All you can do is try and educate them on what they are now, a celebrity, and the world they are now living in. Even as that world seems to be constantly changing.”
Unreasonable expectations
Manziel wasn’t the only active Heisman winner to post better or at least just as impressive numbers the following year but was still unable to impress voters like he did the year before. Not even close.
The all-time example of that was Detmer. In 1991, the BYU quarterback went against the norm and returned to Provo for his senior year, the first Heisman winner to come back since Sims. His 1990 statistics were ridiculous, setting 21 NCAA passing records and tying five more as the Cougars finished 10-3 with a signature win over No. 1 Miami in Week 2. BYU marketers devised what is considered the first true Heisman campaign, mailing out paper neckties to hundreds of voters to remind them of, you know, Ty.
As the 1991 season started, Detmer was warned by LaVell Edwards, his Hall of Fame head coach, to not become too obsessed with topping the year before, and to remain in the here and now. It didn’t work. Detmer suffered injuries and BYU opened the season 0-3 against a slate of ranked teams. He was already in his own head before October.
“We are taught as football players and athletes that your goal is to always be improving, and how do you do that?” Detmer recalled last year. “You do it by being better than your last game. But if your last game was a dream game and your last season was the dream season, that’s a measuring stick that can be difficult to manage.”
He says now that the 0-3 start was an unintended blessing. It sent the spotlight elsewhere, for a while. But when BYU didn’t lose again (there were two ties) and he finished the year with another 4,000-yard season, it was enough to earn the Davey O’Brien and Sammy Baugh awards and another first-team All-American selection. But he finished third in the Heisman vote.
“I think that’s probably the greatest challenge, to top what you did, but for me it wasn’t so much about what others expected, though that definitely is on your mind,” said Bryce Young, who won the Heisman in 2021 as he led Alabama to a national championship. Young fought through a season of physical dings to “only” a 10-2 record and didn’t just finish sixth in the Heisman vote behind Williams, but was third among SEC quarterbacks. “For me, the expectations I had for myself were much greater. That’s where my pressure came from. Not to be unfair to myself.”
Injuries
Bradford, as Gators fans love to remind us, lost to Tebow in a grinder of a 2009 BCS National Championship Game, but was returning the following fall with an Oklahoma team that looked even better than the one that had just set a slew Big 12 offensive records.
In the season opener against BYU, he had just thrown a pass that topped fellow Heisman winner White’s Oklahoma career passing yardage mark but was blasted by a hit on the next play. He struggled with a severe shoulder sprain all season and became the first returning Heisman winner since Staubach in 1964 to finish outside the top 10 in voting.
Running back Mark Ingram won instead, becoming Alabama’s first Heisman winner. Days before the 2010 season opener, Ingram injured his knee and ended up having surgery. By the time he returned to action, he was forced to share carries with another future Heisman finalist, Trent Richardson. Ingram also finished outside the top 10.
“The one aspect of football you can’t control is getting hurt,” Bradford recalled in 2014, when an ACL tear cost him the entire 2014 NFL season with the Rams. “But what drives you to get back is to do right by your teammates. Every injury is frustrating, but it’s especially frustrating when you know you had a team that had a chance to do something special if you hadn’t let them down.”
Their team was too good
Sometimes, that team around a would-be Heisman repeater is also loaded with other stars.
It’s always been a crucial component to a candidate’s portfolio that they be on a team that makes a postseason run. But to do that, there has to be more than one great player on a roster. Sometimes that Heisman winner has to share stats, stage and votes with one of those teammates.
“Oh, I knew when I came back in 2004 that if someone on my team was going to win the Heisman it was going to be Adrian,” said White, who returned to Oklahoma after his 2003 Heisman win to share a backfield with Adrian Peterson. A self-described Heisman history buff, White knew about Army’s back-to-back Mr. Inside/Mr. Outside winners and wanted to do the same with himself and Peterson, who would set several NCAA freshman rushing records in 2004. Instead, they both went to New York as finalists, but lost to Leinart. Oklahoma fans still say that the split between Sooners cost one or the other the trophy. White’s response to that: “Great problem to have.”
Leinart, in turn, was back in New York the following year, having thrown for nearly 500 more yards than his Heisman season. He finished third behind USC teammate Reggie Bush and the player they faced a few weeks later in the BCS championship, Texas QB Vince Young.
“I wasn’t upset at all to lose to Reggie,” the former USC quarterback said. “You know, every Heisman winner gets a ballot. I had him No. 1 on my ballot. I was worried that I was going to take votes away from him and cost him the Heisman, not the other way around.”
Their team wasn’t good enough
Just call this the “Lamar Jackson Rule” — that unwritten rule about one’s team needing to compete for titles to remain Heisman relevant.
The Louisville quarterback won the 2016 Heisman, electrifying college football with a stat line of 3,543 yards passing with 30 touchdowns, 9 interceptions and a rating of 148.8, along with 1,571 yards and 21 touchdowns with his feet. The following season his stats were a nearly identical 3,660/27/10/146.6 in the air and 1,601/18 on the ground.
Yet, he went from runaway winner to distant third-place finisher behind Oklahoma’s Baker Mayfield and Bryce Love of Stanford. The difference? Jackson’s 2016 Louisville team spent the entire season on the big stage, ranked as high as third and ending the year 15th, even after a three-game skid that landed them at 9-4. The 2017 Cardinals never cracked the top 10, and after four pre-November losses, dropped out of the top 25 and out of mind.
“You can’t do it all by yourself,” groused then-Louisville head coach Bobby Petrino after Jackson accounted for 491 yards of offense and four touchdowns against Wake Forest … and lost 42-32 to drop to 5-4. “He’s had to. I think what he’s done has been more impressive than last year, but the voters won’t see it that way. They’ll want another guy.”
Voter fatigue
Petrino’s complaint isn’t uncommon. And he’s not wrong. Mayfield, who threw for 4,627 yards and 43 scores and took OU to the College Football Playoff, deserved the 2017 award. Even Jackson, whose family became close with the Mayfields during that awards season, has said that. But he has also recognized the reality of voter fatigue.
“I think once you’ve had an incredible season and it’s been a great story, everyone loves it, but maybe they want to learn about a new story, a new guy, something they’ve not seen before,” the Baltimore Ravens quarterback said last month. The 2019 NFL MVP started laughing as he said, “I’m not saying that people get tired of you when you’ve been around for a while, but then again maybe I am.”
Let’s go back to Tebow. He had comparable stats on the field in 2008 compared to his Heisman year and did it while winning the SEC and the BCS titles. And he did garner more first-place votes in 2008 but finished third because 153 of 902 voters left him off their ballots completely.
“Do they get sick of you? Well, I think some definitely got sick of me,” said the only player to attend three ceremonies as a Heisman finalist after he finished fifth his senior year (and helped winner Mark Ingram and runner-up Ndamukong Suh work off nerves in the hotel weight room). “But I will tell you this, and I think every guy who has won it and comes back for another year will tell you. I’d rather be blessed with success and they get sick of me and my team than them not think about us at all.”
Someday someone will finally win their second Heisman. It’s inevitable. At least it should be. Everyone believes that, from all of those winners who didn’t pull it off to the one guy who did. Though, yeah, if they’re being honest, even they are beginning to wonder.
“Yes, one day someone will do it. At least I think so,” Griffin said, again chuckling. “I just hope that when it does, I am still here to congratulate them in person.”
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Mark Schlabach
Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer said he doesn’t have interest in other jobs.
DeBoer, who has a 19-6 cumulative record and is in his second season with the ninth-ranked Crimson Tide, had been linked to Penn State‘s coaching vacancy.
“We’re extremely happy at Alabama,” DeBoer said Thursday ahead of this weekend’s SEC championship game against No. 3 Georgia.
“We’re extremely happy here, love the challenge, love the grind, love this place. There’s never been any link, there’s never been any conversation, there’s never been any interest either way. So I’m glad we can put that to bed right now.”
The Nittany Lions’ coaching search is ongoing after they fired James Franklin on Oct. 12. Penn State, which had national title aspirations for this season, started 3-3.
Other coaches who were linked to Penn State’s search, including Vanderbilt’s Clark Lea, Louisville’s Jeff Brohm, Georgia Tech’s Brent Key and BYU’s Kalani Sitake, agreed to contract extensions with their current schools.
Meanwhile, DeBoer said starting defensive end LT Overton and reserve defensive tackle Kelby Collins won’t be available to play against Georgia in Saturday’s contest (4 p.m. ET, ABC) at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta.
DeBoer wouldn’t specify their injuries, calling them “illnesses, medical conditions — whatever you want to call it.”
Overton, a senior from Milton, Georgia, was listed as out on the SEC’s first availability report Wednesday. Collins was not included.
“Just trying to get through these next couple days here and kind of see,” DeBoer said. “Obviously, Kelby’s just popped up, too. Just trying to get through this weekend and kind of see where that’s at. We’ll understand more details when that time comes.”
Overton has 33 tackles and four sacks this season. He had six tackles and a half-sack in the Tide’s 24-21 win at Georgia on Sept. 27, which ended the Bulldogs’ 33-game home winning streak.
DeBoer added that running back Jam Miller, tight end Josh Cuevas and guard Kam Dewberry remain questionable for Saturday’s game.
The Bulldogs will be without starting center Drew Bobo, who injured his left foot in last week’s 16-9 victory against Georgia Tech.
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Max Olson
LUBBOCK, Texas — In December 2021, Jacob Rodriguez felt lost.
The young quarterback had just ended his freshman season at Virginia. Coach Bronco Mendenhall had unexpectedly stepped down. Rodriguez decided to transfer but had minimal tape as a college passer and few options. He had a creeping doubt, too, that maybe it was time to give up his quarterback dreams.
Texas Tech was willing to take a chance on him under two conditions: It didn’t have a scholarship available, and it didn’t need a QB. If Rodriguez wanted to come home to Texas and play for new coach Joey McGuire, he would have to learn to play linebacker.
Rodriguez took out a student loan to pay for school. He couldn’t find an apartment when he arrived in January 2022 and moved in with his older brother at the University Pointe apartments. He slept on the floor of his brother’s bedroom, on a foam queen mattress topper folded in half for a little more cushion.
He started sixth on the linebacker depth chart. He lifted weights twice a day to bulk up and watched film to figure out a position he had never played in high school. Back then, Rodriguez wasn’t envisioning someday becoming the All-America performer he is today.
“My biggest concern was not really trying to get a scholarship,” he said. “I was just trying to make the team. I’m fighting to survive.”
Four years later, Rodriguez is the Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year and the best linebacker in college football. His No. 4 Red Raiders are about to play for a Big 12 championship. Then, they’ll advance to the College Football Playoff. Surreal doesn’t even begin to describe it.
The mustachioed, cowboy hat-wearing captain married to a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter pilot is enjoying a historic senior season and experiencing a new level of fame this fall as Texas Tech pushes him for Heisman Trophy consideration. No other college defender over the past 20 years has put up the stats he has with more than 100 tackles, seven forced fumbles and four interceptions.
And Rodriguez is ready for more as the Red Raiders prepare for the program’s first Big 12 title game against No. 11 BYU on Saturday (noon ET, ABC).
“Man, it’s such a great story,” McGuire said. “In the age of all this money, which is great — I mean, I’m all for it, obviously — this is one of those great stories for college football.”
Rodriguez always had his believers as a record-setting quarterback coming out of Wichita Falls, Texas, but Heisman good? No, even those who know him best say this is getting ridiculous and see it as pure proof of his determination. If Rodriguez could tell his 19-year-old self where he’d be standing today after his humble beginnings?
“That was a long time ago,” Rodriguez said with a smile. “But I’m very proud of that. I think it’s something that I’ll hang my hat on for a long time.
“There’s nowhere else I’d rather be than here, doing what we’re doing.”
HIS CHILDHOOD DREAM was to become the starting quarterback of the Minnesota Vikings.
“Oh yeah, you betcha,” his brother Joshua Rodriguez said with a chuckle.
Jacob Rodriguez was born in Hastings, Minnesota, the youngest of five siblings in a family that competed in everything, from croquet to UNO to holiday pancake decorating. Joe and Ann Rodriguez signed up Jacob and his twin brothers Joshua and Jeremiah for wrestling at a young age because “we were breaking everything,” Joshua said.
Jacob got started at age 3 and won two youth state championships by the time he was 7, pinning every opponent he faced during his second title run.
“That’s one reason why he’s so good at tackling: all those single-leg and double-leg takedowns,” Joshua said.
When the family moved to Wichita Falls in 2010, the boys were eager to start playing tackle football. The twins would play linebacker at Rider High School. Jacob, a four-sport athlete, played varsity as a sophomore and went on to break school records with more than 10,000 career total yards and 106 touchdowns.
“He was the guy, the talk of the town,” Rider teammate Jed Castles said. “He was signing autographs when we went out to restaurants.”
Rider coach Marc Bindel occasionally let his star quarterback play safety, but Rodriguez was a QB first and foremost with a playing style that evoked Tim Tebow comparisons.
“We always called him Captain America,” Bindel said.
Rodriguez was an ESPN 300 recruit, but recruiters were split on his college projection: Should he play offense or defense? Then-Kansas State offensive coordinator Collin Klein gave him his first FBS offer in 2019 and saw his potential as an athletic quarterback.
But others saw something else. In a game against Canyon Randall during his junior year, Rodriguez made a fourth-and-1 play on defense they still talk about to this day. He burst through the line, grabbed the running back by his legs, lifted him in the air and slammed him on his back for the stop.
Bindel had a coach on his staff send the clip to then-Texas Tech defensive coordinator Keith Patterson. The next day, the Red Raiders offered Rodriguez a scholarship as a linebacker. Baylor would end up doing the same after McGuire became its outside linebackers coach in 2020. Rodriguez ultimately received more offers for defense than offense.
But Mendenhall and his Virginia coaches made Rodriguez a priority — and convinced him he could be their next Taysom Hill. His plans to fly out for a spring break official visit were canceled by COVID-19. Rodriguez still committed and enrolled without ever visiting campus.
“I think we all knew his best chance to make it big was going to be on defense,” Bindel said, “but in his heart, he wanted to play quarterback. And why would you not want to try to play quarterback in college?”
Virginia had an established starter in Brennan Armstrong, who broke single-season school records in 2021. But the Cavaliers also had a way to get Rodriguez on the field as a freshman. He agreed to back up Keytaon Thompson at their FBP (football player) position, a hybrid role in Robert Anae’s offense that could entail pretty much anything.
Rodriguez wore No. 98 and Thompson, a former quarterback at Mississippi State, wore No. 99. They lined up at slot receiver, outside receiver, tight end, running back or behind center. They would motion all over the field before the snap and throw blocks, run routes or take handoffs. It was intentional chaos, aimed at confusing opposing defenses.
“It was pure creativity,” Thompson said. “A lot of the stuff [Anae] came up with, I don’t even think he knew it would work. If it looked good, we’d go with it.”
It was an awful lot of running, so much so that Rodriguez said he went from 215 pounds to 185 during the season. He played 169 snaps but only four at quarterback. The rookie didn’t expect to become a Swiss Army knife on offense, but he embraced it.
“I was having a blast,” Rodriguez said. “I was just happy to be on the field.”
All these years later, Rodriguez believes he would’ve finished his college career at Virginia if Mendenhall hadn’t surprised everyone by resigning that December after a 6-6 season. Thompson called it a “totally unexpected curveball.”
“I loved it there and loved the people there,” Rodriguez said. “But I kind of went there to play for him.”
He made the 1,300-mile trek home to Wichita Falls, unsure what his future might hold. And his phone wasn’t ringing.
“There wasn’t a whole lot of buzz,” Bindel said.
TEXAS TECH ASSOCIATE head coach Kenny Perry excitedly called Bindel the morning after Red Raiders’ first spring practice in 2022.
“Jacob Rodriguez is a bad motherf—er,” Perry told him.
The high school coach’s reply?
“Yep, and he’s playing for free right now…”
After leaving Virginia, Rodriguez had asked a few people to reach out to McGuire on his behalf in the hopes he could join the Red Raiders. Two Rider teammates, Castles and E’Maurion “Dooda” Banks, played for Texas Tech. One of his former youth coaches, Dudley McAfee, is a Tech grad and knew McGuire well. All three vouched for Rodriguez to the new head coach.
“Dooda was like, ‘Coach, if we can get this guy on our team, we need to get him,'” McGuire said.
McGuire vowed he would put Rodriguez on scholarship as soon as one became available. These were the early days of NIL before collectives helped take care of walk-ons. Tech could provide him two meals a day, but he would need to take out a student loan to cover his classes and books.
“It was kind of one of those deals where, well, I got to go somewhere,” Rodriguez said.
More importantly, Rodriguez had to accept his future was on defense. Texas Tech already had three starter-caliber quarterbacks in future second-round pick Tyler Shough, Behren Morton and Donovan Smith.
Bindel has no doubt Rodriguez could’ve made it as a tough dual-threat QB such as Georgia Tech‘s Haynes King had he found the right opportunity. Rodriguez doesn’t fault other coaches for missing on him during his month in the portal, especially given his role with the Cavaliers.
“I really didn’t have any quarterback film,” he said. “I just had a whole bunch of other stuff.”
Ann Rodriguez suspects if he hadn’t gone to Virginia to play quarterback, he would’ve regretted never trying. He had received plenty of advice that linebacker was his best path to the NFL. It still wasn’t easy to give up his childhood dream.
“There were a lot of tears shed and a real thought process about it,” his mother said. “It took a lot of him really looking inward and deciding, ‘You know what? I’m going to do whatever it takes.'”
It was Joshua’s idea for Jacob to move in and save money. The brothers lived in a four-bedroom apartment with three random roommates they initially didn’t know. The bedroom was certainly tight quarters — the brothers had to share a bathroom and closet — and Jacob would sleep near the foot of Joshua’s bed. Eventually, they squeezed in a twin-sized mattress for him.
“To be honest, I wouldn’t even know if those guys would be able to say, ‘Yeah, I lived with Jacob Rodriguez,'” Joshua said. “He was never there. He’d go to workouts at 5 a.m. and was gone before they woke up. He’d come back at 9 p.m. after classes and film.”
Rodriguez said he’d go in for the 8 a.m. lifting session and come back at 2 p.m. for another while working to get back to 220 pounds for spring practice. His offensive knowledge helped, but learning to play his new position was a completely different challenge. Former Texas Tech inside linebackers coach Josh Bookbinder said Rodriguez had all the right traits coming out of high school to be a great linebacker — he just hadn’t played the position.
The hardest part early on was the physicality of Texas Tech practices. Quarterbacks never get touched in these settings. Rodriguez had to get the hang of hitting and getting hit day after day. “I’m like, ‘Dude, how can I sustain this?'” he said. If he were to queue up his 2022 practice film today, Rodriguez expects it would probably look “awful.” He barely had a clue.
“The one thing he showed really early was his effort was nonnegotiable,” Bookbinder said. “He may not have known exactly what he was doing at linebacker, but he was running his ass to the ball.”
Texas Tech coaches loved the potential they saw in the spring of 2022. When McGuire called Rodriguez into his office before August preseason camp, the linebacker genuinely didn’t know why. The head coach asked him to call his parents and let them know he was on scholarship.
“There was a lot to learn, but Jacob is a football dude,” McGuire said. “He was raw, but he picked up stuff so fast because he’s really intelligent. Football makes sense to him.”
All the little details — his footwork, hand use, the angles he took in tackling, how he struck ball carriers — came with reps and time as he graduated from playing on instincts to processing and better understanding formations, sets and situations. After playing backup snaps as a sophomore, Rodriguez’s development accelerated throughout his second offseason in Lubbock to earning a starting job entering 2023, but a foot injury sustained in the season opener sidelined him for most of the season.
“It’s like you had all the ingredients on the counter,” said Bookbinder, who’s now coaching at TCU. “You just had to mix them up and let it cook for a little bit.”
The Jacob Rodriguez who returned in 2024 was finally ready to put it all together with an All-Big 12 season, finishing second among all Power 4 defenders with 127 tackles. And the one who returned for his senior year in 2025?
“He’s the best player in college football,” Perry said.
SESI VAILAHI TOOK the handoff and ran up the middle. Rodriguez met the Oklahoma State running back in the hole and stood him up. But this wasn’t your typical tackle for loss.
Vailahi staggered backward, attempting to break free. Except the veteran linebacker wasn’t going for a takedown. No, he was thinking theft. Rodriguez ripped the football right out of Vailahi’s grip and ran the other way for a 69-yard touchdown.
Literally took it away and took it to the house.
Best defender in the country.
📺 @ESPNU | https://t.co/G56N3v07Kv https://t.co/SKua435dYH pic.twitter.com/1FGuLyRaEt
— Texas Tech Football (@TexasTechFB) October 25, 2025
He has been filling up the Heisman highlight reel week after week. Like the two Kansas State fumbles he punched out. The one-handed interception at Utah. The pick he deflected to himself against BYU, or the screen pass he jumped in front of against UCF.
“Every time you look up, he’s at the ball,” Morton said. “The way he can cause and flip momentum in a game, there’s not another player in the country who can do that.”
Rodriguez has created seven turnovers by himself. His FBS-leading seven forced fumbles are more than 53 teams have all season, including Georgia, Ole Miss and Notre Dame, and he’s four away from breaking Khalil Mack’s FBS career record of 16.
McGuire has plenty of respect for Indiana‘s Fernando Mendoza, Vanderbilt‘s Diego Pavia and Ohio State‘s Julian Sayin, the trio of quarterbacks currently leading the Heisman race with one week to go. But he’s not going to relent in campaigning for Rodriguez.
“The thing for me is there’s nobody at the quarterback position that is having a year that we haven’t seen before,” McGuire said. “He’s having a year at the linebacker position that we haven’t seen.”
For comparison: Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te’o finished with 113 tackles and seven interceptions but zero forced fumbles during his Heisman runner-up season in 2012. Te’o was the unquestioned top player on the No. 1 team in the country.
Rodriguez points to Texas Tech pass rusher David Bailey, their projected first-round pick with 12.5 sacks, as the best player they’ve got. His answers in news conferences offer praise toward teammates and coaches. But among his peers, there’s no question.
“This is a talented football team,” Morton said, “and it’s led by Jacob.”
McGuire shook up Texas Tech’s defense after an 8-5 finish in 2024. He brought in defensive coordinator Shiel Wood from Houston, splurged in the portal with a rebuilt defensive line that cost more than $7 million and inked arguably the top transfer class in the country.
Rodriguez considered going pro at the end of last season and went through senior day ceremonies before the home finale. But he put his trust in McGuire and watched as his coach and general manager James Blanchard assembled the kind of roster that could finally compete for a Big 12 championship.
“You could tell as soon as we put pads on for spring ball: Hey, we’re going to be a special group,” Rodriguez said. “I’ve never had this much fun playing football ever.”
Texas Tech’s determined efforts to make Rodriguez a Heisman finalist took a creative turn two weeks ago. Ahead of its home finale against UCF, McGuire texted Joe Rodriguez to break the news: Offensive coordinator Mack Leftwich was working on a Wildcat package to utilize Jacob at quarterback.
“I said, ‘Coach, that’s so freaking awesome,'” his dad said. “I’ve been pushing that for four years. I told him, ‘Be careful, because you’re going to let that beast out.'”
Joe did not warn his wife that this was in the works. Jacob’s wife, Emma, was the one who told her inside Jones AT&T Stadium, a few plays before the moment arrived in the first quarter. She asked her to try to stay calm. Texas Tech running back Cameron Dickey said he got goosebumps when he overheard Leftwich ask, “Is J-Rod ready?”
“He goes out there,” Ann said, “and we both immediately started crying.”
The home crowd got so loud that Rodriguez worried he might mess up the snap cadence. But his offensive line paved a wide-open lane for an easy 2-yard score. He got to go in and do it again Saturday at West Virginia.
Linebacker Jacob Rodriguez with his FIRST CAREER OFFENSIVE TD for @TexasTechFB ‼️
And he hit the Heisman as his celebration 👀 pic.twitter.com/zzOWSXR1Qr
— FOX College Football (@CFBONFOX) November 15, 2025
“Just like old times, man,” said Thompson, his former Virginia teammate.
It was all so cathartic for those who know Rodriguez best, who watched how relentlessly he worked to turn into the linebacker he is today and know what he gave up getting here. The dream had to change along the way, but he wouldn’t change a thing now.
“We couldn’t have dreamt this up,” Ann Rodriguez said.
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