Marcus Mariota Deserves to Be Heisman Favorite After Loss vs. Arizona

Oregon's national championship aspirations may have hit a bump in the road with a home loss against Arizona on Thursday, but Marcus Mariota's Heisman campaign remains very much intact. 

The whole Heisman voting strategy, much like the one used for both MVP awards in baseball, is maddening and incredibly stupid. It's based more on narrative than actual validation of what a player did. 

If Florida State would have lost one regular-season game last year in which Jameis Winston still threw for 350 yards and three touchdowns with no turnovers, does that mean he wasn't the best player in the country because the rest of the team couldn't hold up its end of the bargain?

Mariota has been a one-man wrecking crew for the Ducks this season. The team has scored 29 offensive touchdowns this season, of which Mariota has been responsible for 19 (15 passing, three rushing, one receiving). He's one of only four FBS quarterbacks with at least 100 pass attempts and no interceptions, and his 15-0 ratio of touchdowns to interceptions is the best in the country. 

Before the Arizona game, Chantel Jennings of ESPN, in a debate with Edward Aschoff making the case for Todd Gurley, definitively declared Mariota the best player in the country:

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As a quarterback, he has the highest passer efficiency rating in the nation. There are only 10 quarterbacks in the country who haven’t thrown a pick yet, and none of those signal-callers has thrown more than 10 touchdowns. Mariota has thrown 13. Then, look at his feet. He doesn’t even play running back but he still has about a third of Gurley’s rushing yardage and half the number of rushing touchdowns (Mariota: 214 yards, three touchdowns; Gurley: 610 yards, six touchdowns).

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After the Arizona game ended with the Wildcats on top 31-24, no one was declaring Mariota's Heisman hopes dead, but people were using caveats to suggest why he could still win. Zac Ellis of Sports Illustrated wrote that Mariota is lucky because of the timing:

Another problem that Mariota deals with is playing behind one of the worst offensive lines in college football. Three of the original starting five before the season are hurt (Tyler Johnstone, Andre Yruretagoyena and Jake Fisher), and that has left a true freshman (Tyrell Crosby) and walk-on (Matt Pierson) starting games. 

It's also worth pointing out, as B/R's Matt Miller did on Twitter, that the talent around Mariota just isn't that good:

Despite a bad offensive line and not-great-talent around him, Mariota has still been the best quarterback in college football this season. Even in the loss, he was 20-of-32 for 276 yards and two touchdowns. It wasn't his best game, by any stretch, but hardly one that should be condemned. 

It can, and should, be pointed out that Mariota was stripped of the football on the final drive when Oregon was looking to tie the game. If you want to talk about that moment, though, point out that he was scrambling again because of poor protection from the offensive line. 

If you want to say that Oregon was overrated, that's absolutely a valid point. The Ducks haven't been able to stop anyone of substance this season, allowing 89 points and 1,460 yards in three games against Michigan State, Washington State and Arizona. 

The schedule doesn't get any easier with UCLA next week and Stanford on November 1, but until Mariota actually plays a bad game and the Ducks lose directly because of him, don't try to say that his Heisman candidacy falls apart because the team around him isn't very good. 

There's only so much that a quarterback can do, especially when there's no protection or pocket to throw from. Oregon isn't a title contender based on what we've seen thus far. Mariota is the only thing that makes this team competitive, which only further validates his Heisman stock. 

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