As Usual, Don’t Count Him Out

Cade McNown should have made himself the Heisman Trophy favorite Saturday.

When you complete 23 of 37 passes for 377 yards and four for touchdowns; when you scramble for a 30-yard rushing gain and then, when you’ve barely caught your breath, you pitch out to your tailback and you take off to catch a pass from that tailback and go for a 22-yard gain, and you soon thereafter throw a seven-yard touchdown pass to tie the game at 24, a game that only means absolutely everything and yet it’s still only the third quarter, which means that there is still plenty of time for you to finish things off by heaving, with 21 seconds left, a 61-yard touchdown pass to a receiver who hasn’t caught a touchdown pass all season to win the game, that is a Heisman Trophy performance.

Somehow, when there are still so many big games left in this college football season, when there are so many crucial plays to be made, somehow Texas running back Ricky Williams has become the overwhelming favorite to win the Heisman Trophy.

And this is not to say that Williams isn’t a wondrous running back and all-around stand-up guy who has been a minor league baseball player and who befriended a Texas hero, Doak Walker, when Walker tragically injured himself in a skiing accident. This is not to say that Williams doesn’t have a Heisman hairdo and Heisman derring-do. This is simply to say that McNown is doing some pretty great things too.

Plus, just as Sammy Sosa was hitting home runs for a team in a playoff race as well as to break records while Mark McGwire was hitting home runs without those pesky playoffs to think about, McNown is playing for a team where every point matters while Williams is only running.

By the way, Williams gained only 90 yards Saturday. Yes, 42 of them came on a game-winning drive in the Longhorns’ 37-34 win over Oklahoma State, but if Williams had gained 100-something as he usually does, maybe the Longhorns wouldn’t have needed a game-winning drive at the end.

Certainly he is a biased observer, but listen to UCLA Coach Bob Toledo. Was that a Heisman performance by his quarterback?

“If it wasn’t,” Toledo said, “I don’t know what is. I don’t know what his stats were, but to me a player who wins games for his team and who has great character off the field, that’s a player who should win the Heisman. Cade’s my pick for the Heisman.”

On this slippery, sloppy fake-grass field on a gloomy, drizzly, chilly afternoon and evening where you could see your breath and not feel your toes, and on a day when the Bruins seemed to try so hard to lose, when the special teams’ play was terrible and the rushing attack was mediocre and when the Bruins seemed to tighten up as they saw that Ohio State had been shocked by Michigan State, which meant that UCLA could very well be right back in that national title game, McNown would not let his team lose.

“Don’t make him the Heisman pick off this one game,” UCLA receiver Brian Poli-Dixon said, “because it’s supposed to be a collective thing, but what you saw today was the heart he has and the way he just seems to make all the big plays.”

There was no more amazing sequence than in the third quarter when McNown, his team behind 24-17 and with the ball on his own 37, looked right and left and straight ahead to see no open receivers but plenty of unpopulated real estate, tucked the ball under his arm and ran. McNown even kind of hip-faked a defender and so infuriated the Beavers that one of them grabbed McNown by the facemask at the end of the 30-yard scramble.

After freshman DeShaun Foster gained two yards, McNown pitched the ball to running back Jermaine Lewis, who passed the ball back to McNown, who ran and ran until he was at the Beaver four. Wasn’t McNown out of breath by then?

“No,” he said. “Not at all.”

That 61-yard touchdown pass to Brad Melsby to win the game, that wasn’t too clutch either, was it?

But McNown doesn’t only do the big, flashy things.

When UCLA had third and a little more than five yards to go from the Oregon State 18 with about a minute and a half left in the game, McNown, with his cadence and his eyes, caused the Oregon State defense to jump offsides. The penalty still left the Bruins just short of the first down, a first down they didn’t get, but the UCLA kicker, Chris Sailer, has been operating with a sore groin all season and no field goal is a sure thing. Those extra yards were certainly appreciated by Sailer when he made a 30-yard field goal with 1:17 left to give UCLA a 34-31 lead.

At the end, after the Bruins won for the 18th consecutive time but earned negative style points, McNown stood barefoot on a cement floor outside the showers and displayed not a hint of . . . anything. Not of exhaustion or frustration or exhilaration or desperation.

His 30-yard run? “Just saw an opening,” he said. About that pass reception? “We’ve been working on that play.” Oh, yeah, and that game-winning 61-yard pass? “Saw Brad wide open.”

There is no Heisman on his mind, McNown said, only a national championship. So let us think about the Heisman for him. If McNown didn’t win the Heisman Saturday, he also shouldn’t have lost it yet either. Even if he has.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

McNown Game by Game

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Opp. Yds. TD Texas 339 3 Houston 315 1 Washington St. 205 1 Arizona 171 2 Oregon 395 3 Cal 182 2 Stanford 254 1 Oregon St. 377 4 Totals (8 games) 2,238 17

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