Jayden Daniels started as a true freshman at Arizona State, but with the Sun Devils program in relative shambles during his tenure, he eventually sought a change of scenery to LSU.
Like Joe Burrow before him, Daniels found greener pastures in Baton Rouge and had an electrifying final collegiate season that culminated with a Heisman Trophy.
I loathe the following Twitter account with every fiber of my being (see: actual text in the post). A necessary evil to share bleeped-out video of when Daniels’ ex-teammates were clearing out his locker at ASU:
And there you go, at least there are some useful stats in there I don’t have to type out. People were angry at Daniels back in the day, failing to recognize just how dire the situation was around him. I mean, credit Daniels for developing and flourishing under Brian Kelly’s watch at LSU.
But like…he was never actually this bad:
Alas…those ingrates at Arizona State couldn’t get rid of him fast enough!
Guys who actually know ball knew the truth about Daniels all along…
Some writer who may or may not work for this site and may or may not be clacking away on this very article may or may not have gassed up Jayden Daniels for the Heisman back when his odds were +800.
Good on you if you jumped on that, because he did, indeed, take home college football’s most coveted individual hardware by a rather comfortable margin.
Daniels beat out the likes of Washington’s Michael Penix Jr., Oregon’s Bo Nix and Marvin Harrison Jr. of Ohio State. Penix and Nix are really good quarterbacks. Harrison is perhaps the best wide receiver prospect to (presumably) enter the NFL Draft since Ja’Marr Chase.
The other three Heisman finalists had pretty phenomenal seasons. Daniels is the most lethal dual threat among the trio of QBs, though. It isn’t close. That was the X-factor that pushed him over the top, in my opinion.
Only one wide receiver has won since Desmond Howard in 1991, so Harrison was going to be hard-pressed to beat out any of the quarterbacks.
Say what you will if you want to make a case for anyone else. Daniels played in the SEC, dominated the competition for the vast majority of the season, and LSU only lost when the defense categorically failed.
Next for Daniels? We’ll see if he can push Caleb Williams or Drake Maye to be the No. 1 or No. 2 overall pick. I think Daniels goes somewhere in the top 10 at least. You can’t be as productive as he’s been in 2023, have such an amazing all-around skill set, and not go early in the first round.
