The Heisman Trophy market opened with a familiar shape: quarterbacks everywhere, a couple of big-name transfers, and one receiver trying to crash the party.
At the top sits Notre Dame’s CJ Carr, who is the preseason betting favorite at +700 on FanDuel and DraftKings. The Fighting Irish quarterback put together a strong redshirt freshman season, throwing 24 touchdowns against six interceptions while completing about two-thirds of his passes.
He also comes into this year with starting experience, a highly ranked Notre Dame team around him, and a schedule that looks friendly early on - the first six opponents all had losing records last season. That combination makes Carr an easy name to circle.
Texas quarterback Arch Manning is right behind him, with odds of +750 on DraftKings and +850 on FanDuel. Manning spent much of last season as one of the most talked-about players in college football, though his actual play was uneven.
His opener against an elite Ohio State defense was rough, and the season had its ups and downs from there. Still, he returns with more experience and a pair of standout receivers in Ryan Wingo and Cam Coleman, who transferred from Auburn this offseason.
Like Carr, he’s a second-year starter on a highly regarded team, and that’s usually enough to keep a quarterback near the top of preseason Heisman boards.
The next tier follows the same script. Miami’s Darian Mensah, Oregon’s Dante Moore, Ohio State’s Julian Sayin and Ole Miss’ Trinidad Chambliss are all quarterbacks with at least one year of starting experience, and all four play for teams ranked in the preseason top 10. That alone keeps them in the conversation before the season even kicks off.
Mensah may be the most intriguing of the bunch because he’s the only transfer in that group. He started his career at Tulane as a freshman, then moved to Duke and helped lead the Blue Devils to the ACC title despite a 7-5 record entering the championship game.
Now he’s at Miami, where he could be an upgrade over Carson Beck, who guided the Hurricanes to the national title game last season. Miami is viewed as the clear favorite in the ACC, and Mensah has a chance to pile up numbers along the way.
Another transfer drawing attention is Indiana’s Josh Hoover, who sits at +1500 on both FanDuel and DraftKings. Hoover spent three seasons as a starter at TCU before moving to Indiana, and his college résumé is already loaded: 9,629 passing yards and 79 total touchdowns. The question now is how he handles replacing Fernando Mendoza, who won last year’s Heisman as a transfer quarterback at Indiana.
The top non-quarterback on the board is Ohio State wide receiver Jeremiah Smith. He finished sixth in Heisman voting last season and is listed seventh at +1400 on DraftKings and sixth at +1500 on FanDuel.
Smith and teammate Julian Sayin are the top two returning vote-getters from last year’s race, with Sayin having finished fourth. But the history is working against Smith and every other non-quarterback: a quarterback has taken the trophy in 21 of the past 26 seasons.
There’s also a transfer trend that could matter. A player who changed schools has won the Heisman seven times in the past nine years, which is a boost for Mensah, Moore, Hoover and Chambliss.
Among the top nine names in the odds, Carr, Manning, Smith and Georgia’s Gunner Stockton are the ones who have only played for one school. Sayin is also a one-school player, though he enrolled early at Alabama in the spring before transferring to Ohio State for his first fall semester.
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Notre Dames 2026 Hopes May Hinge On One Unexpected Player
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What makes the conversation more interesting is how much depends on the player who may not be the first name most fans circle in August. Notre Dames 2026 hopes could end up tied to someone whose rise is less established than the others, but whose impact might be outsized if things break the right way. In a season where the Fighting Irish will need production from both the obvious stars and the next layer of contributors, the question is which player ultimately becomes the one no one can afford to overlook. [Read more 🡒]
Notre Dame Defense Faces Its Biggest Test In Playoff Push
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The next step is less about raw ability than how the pieces come together once the games start counting. The staff will be watched closely for how it handles adjustments on the fly and how it manages the secondary rotation, while the front still needs young defensive linemen to emerge and make a difference. For Notre Dame, the real evaluation will come over the course of the season, when the defense has to prove it can hold up under pressure in the games that matter most. [Read more 🡒]
Notre Dame Is Suddenly In The Title Debate For A Reason
Urban Meyers latest title thoughts put Notre Dame in a spot the Irish are used to chasing but not always receiving: the national conversation. While Meyer still likes Ohio State as the safer pick for the 2026 college football crown, he also singled out Notre Dame as a legitimate contender, pointing to a program that has clearly strengthened under its current coaching staff and on the defensive side of the ball. For a team that spends every season under a brighter microscope than most, being mentioned in the same breath as the sports standard-bearers matters.
Meyers view also adds an interesting layer to the race because he framed Ohio State as the team to beat if it stays healthy, which leaves room for Notre Dame to benefit if the path gets a little rougher for the Buckeyes. He went as far as to say the Irish could be the choice in that kind of scenario, underscoring how seriously he views where Marcus Freemans program is right now. In other words, Notre Dame is no longer just part of the broader playoff discussion - it is being weighed as a real answer to it. [Read more 🡒]