Stock Up/Stock Down: C.J. Stroud Gains Ground in Heisman Race, Zach Harrison Stands Out Against Indiana and D.J. Uiagalelei Gets Benched

By Griffin Strom on October 26, 2021 at 8:35 am
Zach Harrison
Marc Lebryk – USA TODAY Sports
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Forgotten about Ohio State’s early-season stumbles yet?

Perhaps not, but the Buckeyes have resembled a far different football team over the past four games, turning in another dominant effort on both sides of the ball this past weekend.

Ohio State’s 54-7 assault on Indiana gave the Buckeyes another boost in momentum, but in this week’s stock report we’re taking a look at which players did the most to make a statement while we also look at who had a bad week across the broader terrain of college football.

Stock Up

C.J. Stroud's Heisman campaign

C.J. Stroud keeps inching closer to the top of most oddsmakers’ Heisman Trophy contender lists.

A 266-yard, three-touchdown outing on the road at Indiana was the latest in a string of three straight jaw-dropping performances, as Stroud has completed 73.8 percent of his throws with 14 touchdown passes and no interceptions in the past three games.

Oklahoma’s Caleb Williams is the only quarterback in the country with a higher Pro Football Focus position grade, and Stroud’s passing efficiency rating of 192.8 sits behind only Coastal Carolina's Grayson McCall.

Per BetOnline.ag, Stroud now has the second-best odds to take home the Heisman Trophy this season, improving from +800 to +350 over the past week. Alabama’s Bryce Young is the lone player with better odds.

TreVeyon Henderson's TD total

The Buckeyes’ star running back is hot on the trail of more Ohio State freshman records after another sublime showing in Bloomington.

With three touchdowns against the Hoosiers, two on the ground and one through the air, TreVeyon Henderson now has 14 total scores through seven games. Henderson has scored a touchdown in each game he’s played as a Buckeye thus far, and with five more scores this season, he’d be the new Ohio State freshman record holder for total touchdowns scored.

Maurice Clarett had 18 as a freshman in 2002, but even he admitted Saturday that his record isn’t likely to remain standing much longer.

Jeremy Ruckert

Ohio State’s top tight end set more than one career-high mark with a standout game on Saturday.

Jeremy Ruckert caught a career-high five passes in the blowout win, tallying 47 yards and two touchdowns in the process. After the game, Ruckert now has a single-season career-high 16 receptions in 2021, with a career-high 186 yards to boot.

The New York native still needs three more trips to the end zone to set a new single-season career-high for touchdowns, but with another couple of performances like the one he had this weekend, that number is well within reach.

Zach Harrison

The junior defensive end was due for a big game entering the weekend, and Zach Harrison delivered against Indiana.

Still without a sack since the season opener, Harrison finally notched his second on Saturday, and was close to having a couple more. A Harrison sack was called back in the third quarter for a defensive holding penalty away from the play in the Ohio State secondary, and Harrison was credited with a tackle for loss but not a sack when he took down Hoosier quarterback Donaven McCulley five yards behind the line of scrimmage on a rush attempt later in the same series.

The Buckeye captain received defensive player of the game honors from the Ohio State coaching staff for his efforts, and Harrison has quickly gained momentum heading into the toughest stretch of the regular season.

Top-10 teams cheating death

While it’s difficult to assess how much praise or criticism is warranted for the following performances, it must be acknowledged that more than one top team was pushed to the brink on Saturday.

Navy had a chance to tie or take a lead on No. 2 Cincinnati inside the final minute after a successful onside kick in a 27-20 affair, but the Bearcats ultimately came up with an interception to stem the tide.

Unranked Kansas took a 10-0 lead over then-No. 3 Oklahoma to halftime, and the Sooners needed multiple fourth-down conversions in the second half – including a somewhat controversial forward handoff to Caleb Williams with 3:20 to play – to escape with a win.

Then-No. 10 Oregon didn’t lead over UCLA until the third quarter, then nearly surrendered a subsequent 34-17 lead when the Bruins scored 14 unanswered points to close out the fourth quarter.

All three picked up wins, but things got more than a little dicey for each of them this weekend.

Wake Forest's offense

Army dominated time of possession so thoroughly against the Demon Deacons that the Wake Forest offense had the ball for all of 17 minutes in Saturday’s game.

Apparently Army should have held onto the ball a bit longer, because that was all Wake Forest needed to put up an inexplicable 70 points and remain undefeated on the season.

Demon Deacon quarterback Sam Hartman finished with 458 yards and five touchdowns, including two 75-yard scores to go along with 54- and 41-yarders.

Wake Forest also had a 46-yard rushing touchdown and an 83-yard interception return score, which is to say nothing of Army’s own cartoonish offensive numbers in a game that produced 126 total points and 1,237 yards of offense.

Stock Down

Penn State

Not only did the Nittany Lions not beat Illinois, a team they were favored to handle by 24 points, they couldn’t even do it given nine additional chances in the longest game in FBS history.

Just shy of reaching a double-digit overtime count Saturday, it took until the game’s final play for either team to reach 20 points. Suffice to say the contest was oftentimes utterly devoid of offensive competency.

Even a win in that ballgame likely would have docked Penn State’s stock, but a loss is considerably more regrettable. The Nittany Lions fell from No. 7 to No. 20 in the AP Top 25, squandering what would have been a top-10 collision of one-loss teams with Ohio State this week.

D.J. Uiagalelei

The fact that Pittsburgh was favored to beat Clemson was newsworthy enough leading into the weekend, but Kenny Pickett and the Panthers actually pulled it off with a convincing 27-17 win over Dabo Swinney and company.

The sputtering Clemson offense struggled once again Saturday, as it has now failed to score more than 21 points against all six Power 5 opponents it has faced this season. Quarterback D.J. Uiagalelei has been central to the Tigers’ offensive issues, and after completing less than half of his passes and throwing two picks Saturday, the former five-star recruit was benched against Pittsburgh.

In seven games, Uiagalelei has failed to throw for 200 yards in all but one contest. The second-year quarterback has five interceptions and just four touchdown passes this season, and his passer efficiency rating (102.9) ranks all the way down at 107th in the country.

Purdue

One week removed from knocking off the No. 2 team in the country, Purdue came crashing back to reality on Saturday.

The Boilermakers, whose upset win over Iowa propelled them to a No. 25 ranking in the AP Top 25, could not keep the momentum going as they lost to Wisconsin in a 30-13 contest over the weekend.

With two rushers tallying 140 or more yards, Wisconsin needed only five pass completions from Graham Mertz to get the job done. Purdue turned the ball over five times and was incapable of running the ball on the other end, as the Boilermakers finished with -13 yards on the ground on 24 attempts.

Jeff Brohm and company still have a winning record at 4-3 this season, but after a losable matchup with Nebraska this week, Purdue has back-to-back meetings with top-10 opponents in Michigan State and Ohio State.

Oklahoma State

The Cowboys had quietly gone undefeated through the first six games of the season, sneaking into a top-10 ranking and earning themselves a place on the good side of the stock report last week. This week, however, Oklahoma State finds itself on the other end, as it dropped a 24-21 ballgame to the streaking Iowa State Cyclones.

The three-point loss cost Oklahoma State seven spots in the AP poll and dismantled the chances of a potential showdown of undefeated top-10 Big 12 programs in the Bedlam rivalry game with Oklahoma to end the regular season.

Of any team currently ranked in the top 15, the Cowboys suffered the furthest slide this week.

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