Eleven Warriors

To be fair though, DR was never anything more than the September Heisman favorite.  Big difference.

The "system guy" variable of any Heisman campaign can be tough to measure.  But I pose you these questions.  Should a player's Heisman campaign be penalized when a near perfect union of that player's abilities is fit into the perfect system for him?  Isn't that a coach's job to find the talent that best fits what he wants to do, and isn't it every recruit's desire to find the system/program that will best showcase their talents?  Because of my percieved answers to these questions, and the fact that system guys such as Andre Ware have been rewarded with the Heisman in yesteryear, I have a hard time penalizing the modern player.  Coaches will always use their ingenuity in developing different philosophies to gain an advantage, but it will always be reliant on the players' execution for it to succeed.  I would say that Johnny Manziel's execution this year was pretty successful.

With the above being said, it could be said that Keenum and Weeden got screwed.  Let's look at how that may have happened.  I think part of it has to do with the one dimensional nature of their campaigns.  Keenum and Weeden's Heisman campaigns were reliant on the numbers they produced through the air, which makes it easier to attribute a higher percentage of the cause to they "system" they were in.  When it comes to dual threat quarterbacks, the Heisman trust is less likely to penalize a player because that player generally has to establish they are good at both passing and running, which leads to higher percieved skill and therefore more credit is given to the player than the system.

As a case in point to support the nature of the dual threat QB allowing for more credit given to the player than the system, we can look close to home with Denard Robinson and Urban Meyer.  From the player side of things, Denard Robinson put up some great numbers in 2010 under Rich Rodriguez.  Denard's passing numbers in 2010 were vastly supirior to his final two seasons and he also had his highest rushing output.  People talked about RR's system, but mostly they talked about Denard and how dynamic he was.  Clearly after the two years under Hoke, it can be seen that even though Denard is an outstanding player, some of his additional success in 2010 was probably attributable to RR's system.  This fact never seemed to hinder his campaign in 2010, but was instead probably mostly derailed by Michigan's win/loss record.

With regards to Urban Meyer, when talking about him, people always talk about his offensive system, being an offensive genius, and yes, he has established at other programs that he has philosiphies that are reliant on a dual threat quarterback (which even if he doesn't have one, his offenses tend to be QB centric), but when we talk about Braxton Miller's Heisman campaign, we never talk about system or concern ourselves with it and how it may derail him from winning the Heisman.  We instead talk about whether his body of work merits an invite to NYC and winning it all.  Given that Urban has established his own offensive system, ability to put QB's in a position to succeed and that they are a strong focus of his offense, why don't we talk about system and attribute some level of Miller's success to said system?  In my opinion, it is because the nature of a dual threat quarterback to highlight skill level in multiple areas keeps the focus on the player over the system