Murray 2nd straight Sooners QB to win Heisman
Oklahoma QB Kyler Murray wins the 2018 Heisman Trophy, making it back-to-back years a Sooner has won the award. (5:22)
Kyler Murray has been named the country’s top college football player in what could be his final season playing the sport.
Murray, who threw for over 4,000 yards and 40 touchdowns for Oklahoma this season, won the Heisman Trophy on Saturday night in New York over fellow quarterbacks Tua Tagovailoa of Alabama and Dwayne Haskins of Ohio State.
Tua Tagovailoa’s 1,871 points are the most by a runner-up in Heisman history. This year also marks the third time that the top 6 all play the same position (QB in 2001, RB in 1975).
Although Murray has another season of eligibility remaining and is also considered a potential first-round pick in the NFL draft, he has said he is prepared to give up football to focus on baseball, after the Oakland Athletics selected him ninth overall in this year’s Major League Baseball draft.
“This is crazy,” Murray said in accepting the award. “This is an honor. Something that I’ll never forget, something I’ll always cherish for the rest of my life.”
Murray follows in the footsteps of Baker Mayfield, who won the Heisman while with the Sooners last year. It is the first time since 1945-46 that different players from the same school won the award in back-to-back years (not counting Reggie Bush’s vacated Heisman for USC in 2005, which followed his teammate Matt Leinart).
Mayfield wrote on Instagram: “AND THATS WHAT WE CALL BACK TO BACK. YOU DESERVE IT K1, So proud of you man. Enjoy every second of it. Absolutely nobody can put a ceiling on you…. Football or baseball, follow your dreams brotha.”
Oklahoma’s seventh Heisman pulls it into a tie with Notre Dame and Ohio State for the most by any school.
Here are the questions that the Oakland A’s first-round draft pick, on the brink of winning a Heisman Trophy, will have to answer.
Kyler Murray capped a remarkable season with the Heisman Trophy, but Alabama’s Tua Tagovailoa gave him a run for his money. We look at other athletes across sports whose spectacular seasons went unrewarded.
The winner was far from a foregone conclusion, but Murray (517 first-place votes and 2,167 points) ended up with a fairly comfortable margin of 296 points over Tagovailoa, while Haskins was a distant third. Murray was named on 92 percent of the Heisman ballots, third-most all time.
Tagovailoa was the Heisman front-runner for most of the season, but Murray surged late as the Sooners turned to him and its offense to bailout a leaky defense down the stretch. Tagovailoa also picked a bad time to have his worst game of the season, throwing two interceptions in the SEC championship against Georgia and leaving early with a sprained ankle.
In addition to his passing stats, Murray also ran for 892 yards and 11 touchdowns. His 51 touchdowns responsible for equaled Haskins for the most in the Football Bowl Subdivision.
As No. 4 Oklahoma prepares to face Tagovailoa’s Alabama in the College Football Playoff in three weeks, Murray is on pace to become the first FBS starting quarterback to average at least 300 passing yards and 60 rushing yards per game.
Murray, who started his college career at Texas A&M, joins Mayfield and Army’s Doc Blanchard in 1945 as the only players to win the Heisman after transferring directly from one major college program to another.
If Murray does pursue baseball as planned, he could become only the third player to win the Heisman and play in the majors, after Bo Jackson and Vic Janowicz.
Oklahoma’s late-season Heisman campaign for Murray harkened back Jackson, the 1985 Heisman winner who went on to star in both the NFL and MLB, and his “Bo Knows” Nike ads. The A’s already referenced the campaign in a congratulatory tweet.
Turns out, he knew.
Congratulations to the 2018 Heisman Trophy Winner @TheKylerMurray! #KylerKnows pic.twitter.com/iITu26TG8t
Murray has already signed a $4.66 million contract with the A’s.
“I’d like to do both if possible,” Murray said Friday about playing baseball and football. “But I don’t know how possible that is.”
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.