SEC Football Q&A: Who's the SEC's Best Candidate to Win the Heisman Trophy?

After a promising start, the race for the Heisman Trophy seems to be missing one of its key ingredients.

The SEC.

According to Odds Shark, LSU running back Leonard Fournette has gone from +400 (bet $100 to win $400) to +3300 since the start of the season, Georgia running back Nick Chubb went from +1000 after Game 1 to off the board, and Chad Kelly, Joshua Dobbs, Bo Scarbrough, Trevor Knight and Calvin Ridley have too disappeared off the board.

Who's the best SEC option to win the Heisman now that one month of the season is gone? That question and more are answered in this week's edition of SEC Q&A.

It sounds crazy considering he's a true freshman, but give me Alabama quarterback Jalen Hurts.

He has jumped into the mix with +4000 odds during the first month of the season, and did so in the midst of three blowouts that didn't put a ton of pressure on his shoulders. 

In the one game that did place the onus on him—the 48-43 win over Ole Miss in which Bama dug out of a three-score hole on the road—Hurts shined. He rushed for 146 yards, threw for 158 and looked like a star in the making in an offense under coordinator Lane Kiffin that began to establish an identity. It was the first time since Tyler Watts broke the century mark in 2001 that a Crimson Tide quarterback rushed for more than 100 yards, and it announced a new era of offensive football in Tuscaloosa.

He's not going to put up silly, video game numbers during the final two months of the season.

Alabama typically packs it in when it gets big leads, and Hurts won't challenge the numbers that some other SEC Heisman winners like Johnny Manziel, Cam Newton or Tim Tebow have produced during their Heisman seasons.

But he will show those flashes more than he has over the first month of the season, keep his team in the national title race and become a more consistent passer during the final two months of the season.

Even though running back Derrick Henry took home the award last year, the Heisman is still driven by quarterbacks—particularly dual-threat quarterbacks on teams that contend for the national title in November.

Hurts checks off all of those boxes and is the SEC's best shot (even though, admittedly, he's a long shot). 

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The answer is definitely not "no," because I'm a firm believer that first-time head coaches in the SEC typically learn enough lessons for a lifetime in the first go-round, with their second (or in Orgeron's case, third) stints as head coaches being much more sustainable.

It honestly hinges on Alabama.

If Coach O can break LSU's five-game losing streak to the Tigers' bitter SEC West rival, and combine that with, say, a 6-2 record over the final eight games of the regular season, it absolutely should warrant serious consideration for the job on a permanent basis.

He has already taken a big step simply by telling LSU fans what they've been longing to hear.

"We’re going to spread the ball out a little bit, do some different things, change the style of play," Orgeron said in his introductory press conference. "There’s a lot of things on offense that we’ve done well running the football. We want to have a different passing game, we want to be more creative, find ways for the quarterback to get the ball down the field throwing it."

If he has success with that, beats Alabama and begins to dig LSU out of this rut, Tigers fans should be fully on board with him being a primary option.

Will he jump ahead of Houston's Tom Herman, Alabama offensive coordinator Lane Kiffin or perhaps even Florida State head coach Jimbo Fisher (if LSU decides to go down that road again)? No.

But he'd be strong fallback candidate at that point.

Miles said on The Dan Patrick Show on Monday that he wants to coach again.

"I don't golf, play no tennis," he said (via 247Sports' Brad Crawford). "I enjoy shooting the gun, don't necessarily like pointing at animals. Play cards, but not very well. But what I've done for 12-14 hours a day for the last number of years is coach football. I'd have a difficult time not being a coach."

That's a standard answer for a recently fired head coach, even if it is gussied up in Miles' own special way given his unique grasp of the English language. But I have a hard time finding the exact location that would be a fit for Miles.

He runs an ultra-conservative, antiquated offense, and couldn't make it work with athletes at LSU who are some of the best in the entire sport.

Maybe Penn State if the Nittany Lions bail on the James Franklin experiment?

The Big Ten has evolved a bit and has some more exotic offenses, including Ohio State and Nebraska. But at its core, it's still an old-school, smashmouth conference that has powers like Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa and Michigan State that are similar to the same style Miles wants to run.

Other than that, I can't see him taking a mid- to low-level Power Five job or a Group of Five job simply to have a job. If those jobs are the only ones out there, I fully expect Miles to crisscross the country having some fun, drop in for some media appearances from time to time and enjoying a little time away from football with his family. 

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Man, this is a fun question.

As stated in the video above, I think Tom Herman will stay at Houston if the program gets a Big 12 invitation, and Jimbo Fisher at LSU is more of a possibility but not a probability at this point. Florida is way too good defensively to finish 7-5, second-half meltdown versus Tennessee notwithstanding.

I can certainly see the Vols winning the SEC Championship Game, especially if they build off what happened in the win over Florida.

Joshua Dobbs throwing for 319 yards and four touchdowns against that Gators secondary matters a lot. The defensive front growing up in front of our eyes in a big game matters a lot. The offensive line having success in the second half matters a lot.

Sustaining it might be a bit more of a challenge, considering none of those things happened for three-and-a-half games, but came together in the final 30 minutes on Saturday. But with a loaded and experienced roster, that's the kind of team that Tennessee could and should be.

It doesn't matter who the Vols would play in a hypothetical SEC Championship Game matchup, even if it's a rematch with Alabama. With a dynamic offense, solid play at the line of scrimmage and newfound confidence, Tennessee winning the SEC title wouldn't surprise me at all.

Joe Robbins/Getty Images

Quotes obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted. Statistics courtesy of cfbstats unless otherwise noted. All recruiting information is courtesy of 247Sports. Odds provided by Odds Shark.

Barrett Sallee is the lead SEC college football writer and national college football video analyst for Bleacher Report as well as a host on Bleacher Report Radio on SiriusXM 83. Follow Barrett on Twitter @BarrettSallee.