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College Football Futures: 2022 Heisman Trophy Picks and Predictions

Alex Hardin Fri 7/8 8:34am PT
Our NCAAF experts are backing Cameron Rising to win the 2022 Heisman Trophy.
Image Credit: Imagn

College Football Betting analyst Alex Hardin gives his favorite Heisman Trophy futures picks, as he looks ahead to the beginning of the 2022 NCAAF season!

The college football player futures market consists solely of the Heisman Trophy Winner, which typically is an offensive player (most often a quarterback), usually from a very successful team with championship aspirations.

In the last 20 years of the award, we have seen 17 quarterbacks, two running backs, and one wide receiver take home the hardware. 

At the top of the betting board, we are seeing the quarterbacks from the top two projected teams in the country priced extremely aggressively. I just have no interest in betting Ohio State’s CJ Stroud at +200, or Alabama’s Bryce Young at +350, although, I do agree that they cover an extremely high portion of the actual win equity for the award.

Caleb Williams, who checks in as the third favorite, is priced a little bit more appealing at the +800 range. However, I am way lower than the market on USC, in terms of team success (mostly because of their defense). I am passing on Caleb as well. 

After the top three, we have a significant drop off, and this is really where you can begin to shop around for value.

Line shopping is one of the most important things you can do in this specific market, as we see extreme deltas on player prices from site to site.

Generally speaking, there are some sites that juice this market to the point where it’s nearly unplayable, and then you have other books that are hanging the most appealing numbers on most of the guys. 

I am going to go over a few of my favorite Heisman futures and call out where you can find the best line for each bet. For the purpose of this article, I am going to break up three units of action into different sized bets for each of my favorite Heisman futures to show my relative conviction on each.  

Free College Football Futures Picks: 2022 Heisman Trophy Winner

Top Play – Cameron Rising (Utah)

If you have read my previous futures articles this offseason, I have mentioned a few times how much I love all things Utah Utes relative to where they are being priced.

This Heisman market is no different, as their quarterback Cameron Rising is easily my favorite heisman bet of them all at 80-1. Rising is coming off a breakout season where he landed on the All-Pac-12 First Team after showing off his dual threat skills (2500 pass yards, 20 pass TDs, 500 rush yards, 6 rush TDs) and a surprising level of poise en route to a 10 win season. The ability to put up gaudy stats as a dual threat QB helps a lot in the process of winning a Heisman Trophy. 

While stats and highlights are great, being a Heisman candidate in most cases requires your team to typically be undefeated or a one loss team come voting time.

I might be crazy, but I think Utah is live to run the table this season and squeeze into the College Football Playoffs. I have a ton of faith in its offense and I certainly think there’s top-10 upside on that side of the ball this year. Ultimately, it’s going to come down to defensive performance. 

Looking at their schedule, they start off at Florida – a game that has already seen the spread move around five points in the Utes’ favor, with them now sitting as road dogs (the first sign to me that the market is catching on).

Beyond that, the Utes have some tricky road spots at UCLA and Oregon, but every game is certainly winnable in a down Pac-12. I also like that they get USC earlier on their schedule, as I think they can gain some hype from beating them early in the season as I expect a USC win will look a bit weaker later in the season once they lose a few games. I am a USC naysayer this year – their defense is just not going to be good enough, but certainly would be happy if their misfortune provided a hype springboard for the Utes. 

Every Heisman-winning quarterback needs an explosive supporting cast (except maybe Lamar Jackson), and I think the emergence of 6’5” sophomore wide receiver Devaughn Vele will be a big part of that.

He was a walk-on, who was productive last season, but was inconsistent and chronically underutilized. However, it seems as though he had a really impressive spring camp from all accounts and is poised to have a much bigger role this season as WR1.

Beyond Vele, tight ends Dalton Kincaid and Brant Kuite are a talented pair (Kuite is a beast that can be used in different ways), while running back Tavion Thomas should be among the top producers in the country. Utah’s offense is pretty loaded and I want to get on board before a single game is played.

Rising at 80-1 is certainly one play I am adding to the preseason portfolio, and will be my largest Heisman wager of the bunch. 

Dillon Gabriel (Oklahoma)

With Caleb Williams following Lincoln Riley to USC, Oklahoma brings in former UCF quarterback Dillon Gabriel to lead the offense.

The lefty is no stranger to playing in highly-productive offenses, as he had a few great seasons under Josh Heupel at UCF before he moved on to Tennessee. There are many question marks with the Sooners this year, after so much change in the offseason, but two things still remain – they are loaded with talent and are still favorites to win the Big 12.

OU will likely be favored in every game this regular season and they certainly have paths to run the table, or still be candidates for the playoff with one loss. In that scenario, as long as Gabriel stays healthy, he would likely be their representative in the Heisman race. 

This is just a reasonable price on a solid quarterback that should lead a top 10 team, who has a pretty realistic path to an undefeated record – sometimes we don’t really need to go deeper. We just take the macro value and move on.

I like this Gabriel future a little bit more than the Van Dyke play (next on the list at the same price) just because I think Oklahoma is much more likely to reach that team upside necessary for consideration. However, I’ll certainly grab a piece of both. 

Tyler Van Dyke (Miami, FL)

It would have been nice to get on Van Dyke earlier in the summer when he was much longer odds. However, I think 35-1 is still a decent look, considering the path Miami has this season to win the ACC and get their QB into the conversation.

In only 8 full games last season (all conference games), Van Dyke threw for nearly 3,000 yards with 25 TDs and only 6 INT – very solid for a freshman coming into a high-pressure job. His performance last year was enough to get the ‘Canes hype cycle going this offseason, and that was even further increased when they brought in Mario Cristobal home from Oregon to be their new head coach.

While Cristobal, to me, is a neutral hire, I am encouraged that he brought in Josh Gattis (formerly of Michigan) to be their offensive coordinator – someone who really tries to get his speed in open space. This could be a really nice fit and should certainly attract some really high-end skill player recruits in the short term.

I like Miami to make a run at an ACC title this year and that would certainly come on the back of an explosive Tyler Van Dyke season. 

Bijan Robinson (Texas)

While it is really tough for a running back to actually win the Heisman in the modern college game (one RB winner in last 13 years), Bijan is the best back in college football (2020: 86-703-4 / 2021: 195-1127-11 on the ground) and worth consideration at this number.

Bijan is around 20-1 (4.8% implied probability) at most shops, which is quite a poor bet in my opinion – but when you push that up to 50-1 (2% implied probability) like we currently see at FanDuel, I am certainly taking a small shot. 

The Texas QB situation is somewhat unclear, as of now, but generally speaking, there are many reasons to suggest they will be quite potent offensively – if their offensive line can hold up.

Bijan will be the centerpiece of the run game, and should be heavily involved in the passing attack out of the backfield.  If Texas reaches its upside, as a team, I really do believe Bijan will be the guy the team is positioning and pushing as “their” Heisman candidate (although I definitely understand while many would say it’s Quinn Ewers, who is priced shorter).

While it’s still a fairly large longshot that Texas can be that one-loss or undefeated team (needed to have a running back as a Heisman contender), beating Alabama on a neutral field on September 10th would immediately catapult them into that national conversation. 

Jaxon Smith-Njigba (Ohio State)

Obviously, CJ Stroud is the likely winner of the Heisman from Ohio State, but I think there is an outcome where so much of the passing production is funneled to JSN, that his overall season stat line may just be so absurd, that he actually is live to win the award.

Similar to the Bijan play, this is a bet I want nothing to do with in the 25 to 30-1 range he is at on most books, but I will take advantage of the friendlier FanDuel player props at 50-1. 

With Chris Olave and Garrett Wilson both in the NFL, JSN will be the clear cut number one wide receiver for potentially the most explosive passing offenses in the country. When Wilson and Olave both opted out of the Rose Bowl last season, JSN posted an insane 15-347-3 line.

That was not just a fluke breakout game, as prior to that bowl performance JSN had 97+ yards in seven-straight games. A quarterback is still quite likely to win this award, but if a wide receiver happens to get into the conversation I think it will be the absurdly talented Ohio State stud. 

Honorable Mention Picks: