Can a Wide Receiver Realistically Win the Heisman Trophy This Year?

West Virginia Mountaineers head coach Dana Holgorsen knows wide receivers. Among the wideouts he's connected to are Wes Welker, Michael Crabtree, Justin Blackmon and Kevin White. 

So when Holgorsen said Baylor wide receiver Corey Coleman was "the best player in college football" last Saturday, well, maybe we all need to listen.

But could Coleman actually be named college football's best player by winning the Heisman Trophy? For that matter, why not include TCU's Josh Doctson, who leads college football with 152.4 receiving yards per game, in the Heisman loop? 

For as impressive as those two have been, it's an uphill battle. Some wideouts have gotten close in recent years. For instance, Alabama's Amari Cooper finished third in the voting last year, but the last wide receiver to win the Heisman was Michigan's Desmond Howard in 1991.  

But it's important to first know why Holgorsen said what he said. In other words, why is Coleman, who had 10 catches for 199 yards and three touchdowns in a 62-38 win over the Mountaineers, being mentioned in the Heisman race?

Charlie Neibergall/Associated Press

The numbers say it all. Coleman is third nationally in receiving yards (877), but he leads the country with 16 touchdowns, a Baylor single-season record, through six games. He's on pace to shatter the NCAA FBS record of 27 single-season touchdown grabs previously held by Louisiana Tech's Troy Edwards in 1998. 

Coleman scores a touchdown at an astounding rate of once every 2.6 catches. He's been rarely utilized in the second half of games this year, with just seven receptions, presumably because Baylor has had things under control by halftime. However, he has four touchdowns on those seven catches, and all four are of at least 25 yards. 

We could dissect the numbers further, but you get the point. Coleman is a touchdown machine, and he does it all without contributing much on special teams.

It's a similar story for Doctson, who averages 8.6 catches per game and a more "modest" 5-to-1 touchdown-to-catch ratio. Their styles are different, however. Whereas Coleman is best in the open field—Holgorsen compared Coleman's skill set to Tavon Austin's, per ESPN.com's Jake Trotter—Doctson shines when he's making a play on a jump ball and being physical. 

Differences aside, Coleman and Doctson are two of the most outstanding wideouts in college football and likely the 1A and 1B selections, in either order, for the Biletnikoff Award, given annually to the top receiver.

The Heisman consideration both players are receiving starts there, but does it also end there? 

Versatility is virtually a necessity for non-quarterbacks and some running backs in the Heisman race, because it boosts value. Since they don't touch the ball on every play, or even most plays, skill players have to show dominance elsewhere. LSU running back Leonard Fournette, the current odds-on favorite to win the Heisman, per OddsShark.com, is the exception. 

But so, too, are Coleman and Doctson. It's for that reason they're in the immediate Heisman conversation at all. 

However, therein lies the pertinent issue: Pointing solely to a wide receiver's stats becomes tricky relative to the quarterback. A running back, like Fournette, may put up big numbers in part because he's given running lanes by his offensive line—the other part is Fournette is as physical a runner as you'll find in college football—but the two don't share stats in the same way a quarterback and receiver do.

Is a wideout putting up big numbers because he's that good, or does he have a great quarterback getting him the ball? After all, a quarterback's numbers will inherently be better than his wide receiver's. In the cases of Coleman and Doctson, it's somewhere right in the middle. 

Splitting credit is no way to win the Heisman, though. How, then, do players like Coleman and Doctson prove they're more valuable than their quarterbacks, Seth Russell and Trevone Boykin, respectively? Russell and Boykin are legitimate Heisman contenders, too. 

There's no easy answer, but the simplest way is to look at how much a quarterback shares the wealth among his receivers. Plenty of quarterbacks put up video game-type numbers, but not every wide receiver does, both nationally and relative to the rest of the team.

For instance, Coleman is responsible for about one out of every three receptions Baylor has made this season and has twice as many catches as the next-leading receiver, Jay Lee. Similarly, Doctson also is responsible for around one out of every three catches for TCU. However, the numbers thin dramatically beyond him. The Frogs' next-leading receiver, Desmon White, has 19 catches, meaning Doctson has more than three times the number of grabs. 

While wideouts like Texas A&M's Christian Kirk, USC's JuJu Smith-Schuster, Bowling Green's Roger Lewis and Notre Dame's Will Fuller have been outstanding this year, none boasts the same level of percentages or overall numbers as Coleman and Doctson. Furthermore, Coleman and Doctson are on playoff-caliber teams. That matters, like it or not. Only Kirk and Fuller can say the same.  

But the best news for Coleman and Doctson as it pertains to the Heisman conversation going forward is that neither has played against his best competition. The Big 12 in the month of November is an absolute cage fight for supremacy. Below is the schedule in which the top four teams in the Big 12—Baylor, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and TCU—all play one another:

Week 10	Week 11	Week 12	Week 13
TCU at Oklahoma State	Oklahoma at Baylor	TCU at Oklahoma	Baylor at TCU
--	--	Baylor at Oklahoma State	Oklahoma at Oklahoma State

For Coleman and Doctson, that means they'll have opportunities to keep pace with their numbers and have their best games against the best teams. 

Stewart Mandel of Fox Sports accurately called the Heisman chase a "a horse race," in which timing is a key component. For every Geno Smith, the former West Virginia quarterback who won the Heisman in September of 2012, there's a Johnny Manziel who cements himself as the real Heisman winner later in the year. 

Along those lines, for Coleman or Doctson to have a real shot, Fournette needs to fall back a bit, if not entirely off the face of the earth. Good luck there. 

Still, Coleman and Doctson are more than just dark horses now. When Baylor and TCU face off in Fort Worth on Nov. 27, the main storyline could involve playoff implications. But there could also be Heisman votes on the line, and not necessarily for the players you'd think. 

Ben Kercheval is a lead writer for college football. All quotes cited unless obtained firsthand. All stats courtesy of cfbstats.com.