Presumed Starter for Texas A&M Football Conner Weigman Makes Early Heisman List
Even though Texas A&M football's season ended just over a week ago, and the national championship hasn't even taken place yet, Heisman odds for 2024 are still apparently available! Decisions haven't even been made yet about who is going to the NFL and who is staying in college, and there's still another transfer portal window to weather come spring time, but Vegas has already compiled a list.
Given all those factors I just mentioned, this should obviously be taken with a huge grain of salt. There's so much we still don't know about who will even be on each team, particularly with the number one name on this list. However, the list, put out by On3 on Twitter, still reveals the way that the general public will be thinking of each guy going forward into the year.
Atop the list is Longhorns quarterback Quinn Ewers, tied with Jalen Milroe and Carson Beck. I think Ewers will have a tough time in the SEC generally; Sark schemes up easy shots for him much of the time, but when those first reads aren't open, he struggles mightily to read defenses. He has all the physical gifts and tools you need to play the position, but he hasn't been able to consistently execute outside of the script that Sark makes, not to mention that the coach himself has questionable play calling after the script runs out. Also, apparently, Ewers isn't even a lock to start:
Quinn Ewers won't be guaranteed a starting job if he returns to Texas in 2024 with Arch Manning waiting in the wings. https://t.co/zKhTNco0CR
— Cedric Golden (@CedGolden) January 5, 2024
Milroe and Beck make sense; they both play on teams expected to win a lot of games. Milroe has more flashy plays than Beck does, given that he is 1) mobile and 2) an excellent deep-ball passer, so I'm not sure the UGA QB will get too much consideration there. After them is Dillon Gabriel, now at Oregon. He's another strong contender.
After Gabriel comes a four-way tie: JJ McCarthy, freshman Volunteer QB Nico Iamaleava, freshman OU QB Jackson Arnold, and Weigman. Iamaleava and Weigman are the two out of this group I would pick as the standout talents: Arnold is just a step behind, in my opinion, and McCarthy, while again on a winning team, isn't quite the individual player that these other three are.
Anyway, this is a meaningless list, but it's nice to see people recognizing Weigman's obvious talent, even if he hasn't been able to fully showcase it yet. That first game against Notre Dame will wake a lot of people up.