{"id":586399,"date":"2026-02-06T14:30:16","date_gmt":"2026-02-06T14:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/586399\/"},"modified":"2026-02-06T14:30:16","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T14:30:16","slug":"who-won-our-2025-heisman-trophy-fantasy-draft-the-results-are-in-and-they-are-bad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/586399\/","title":{"rendered":"Who won our 2025 Heisman Trophy Fantasy Draft? The results are in, and they are bad"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the past six seasons, The Athletic\u2019s college football writers have held a preseason draft of Heisman contenders<\/a>, earning points based on how high our selections finish in the voting (if any of them do). I consider it a success just to pick one of the eventual finalists, as happened this past season with my first-round pick: Notre Dame running back Jeremiyah Love, who finished in third place.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, and perhaps embarrassingly, he was the highest finisher whom any of us selected. But I got edged in the final standings by Ralph Russo, who got two of the top six vote-getters with the Ohio State tandem of Julian Sayin and Jeremiah Smith.<\/p>\n

WriterRound 1Round 2Round 3Round 4<\/p>\n

Vannini<\/p>\n

Cade Klubnik<\/p>\n

Sam Leavitt<\/p>\n

Miller Moss<\/p>\n

Kevin Jennings<\/p>\n

Russo<\/p>\n

Jeremiah Smith<\/p>\n

Avery Johnson<\/p>\n

Julian Sayin<\/p>\n

Marcel Reed<\/p>\n

Dochterman<\/p>\n

Arch Manning<\/p>\n

Demond Williams<\/p>\n

Eli Holstein<\/p>\n

Mark Gronowski<\/p>\n

Mandel<\/p>\n

Jeremiyah Love<\/p>\n

Bryce Underwood<\/p>\n

Nick Singleton<\/p>\n

Darian Mensah<\/p>\n

Feldman<\/p>\n

Garrett Nussmeier<\/p>\n

Carson Beck<\/p>\n

Ty Simpson<\/p>\n

Dylan Raiola<\/p>\n

Ubben<\/p>\n

LaNorris Sellers<\/p>\n

DJ Lagway<\/p>\n

Devon Dampier<\/p>\n

Austin Simmons<\/p>\n

Navarro<\/p>\n

Jackson Arnold<\/p>\n

Dante Moore<\/p>\n

Ryan Williams<\/p>\n

Nate Frazier<\/p>\n

Williams<\/p>\n

Drew Allar<\/p>\n

John Mateer<\/p>\n

Makhi Hughes<\/p>\n

TJ Parker<\/p>\n

None of our eight voters used any of our combined 32 picks on this year\u2019s winner, Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza<\/a>. Though in fairness, how could anyone have seen him coming? Mendoza went 10-10 in two seasons as a starter at Cal before transferring to Indiana. He became the first winner to go undrafted in our poll since Alabama receiver DeVonta Smith in 2020.<\/p>\n

More inexplicable is the fact that nobody picked the runner-up, either, despite the fact that Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia was a breakout star in 2024. I can\u2019t speak for the others, but I remember assuming in the preseason that Vanderbilt would be a 6-6-type team, which wouldn\u2019t be good enough to get its quarterback to New York.<\/p>\n

Instead, the Commodores broke through and won 10 games.<\/p>\n

It marked the first time no one selected the runner-up since TCU\u2019s Max Duggan in 2022 and the first time that neither of the top two was drafted. Perhaps not coincidentally, it came the year the top two played for Indiana and Vanderbilt.<\/p>\n

As always, it\u2019s amusing to look back and cringe at some of the names that did get drafted, starting with Chris Vannini\u2019s No. 1 pick: Clemson quarterback Cade Klubnik. Klubnik was one of several first-round QBs who finished with underwhelming seasons, including LSU\u2019s Garrett Nussmeier, South Carolina\u2019s LaNorris Sellers, Penn State\u2019s Drew Allar (though he missed the second half of the season) and, um, Auburn\u2019s Jackson Arnold. Yikes on that one, Manny Navarro.<\/p>\n

The biggest bust of the draft, though, came courtesy of Justin Williams. He used his third-round pick on Oregon running back Makhi Hughes, who finished the season with 17 carries.<\/p>\n

All told, our panel embarrassingly missed on seven of the top 10 finishers. In addition to Mendoza and Pavia, no one selected Texas Tech linebacker Jacob Rodriguez (No. 5), Georgia quarterback Gunner Stockton (No. 7), Ole Miss quarterback Trinidad Chambliss (No. 8), Ohio State safety Caleb Downs (No. 9) or Georgia Tech quarterback Haynes King (No. 10).<\/p>\n

Better luck to all of us next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the past six seasons, The Athletic\u2019s college football writers have held a preseason draft of Heisman contenders,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":586400,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[7,5486,6523,6,12,20705],"class_list":["post-586399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba-draft","tag-basketball","tag-college-football","tag-indiana-hoosiers","tag-nba","tag-nba-draft","tag-vanderbilt-commodores"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116024169305934035","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=586399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586399\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/586400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=586399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=586399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=586399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}