Georgia football: can D’Andre Swift win the Heisman
One oddsmaker has Georgia football star offensive players Jake Fromm and D’Andre Swift as two of their favorites to win the 2019 Heisman Trophy.
According to one online oddsmaker, D’Andre Swift (and Jake Fromm) has 12/1 odds of winning the Heisman Trophy this December. The reigning rushing leader of Georgia football’s 2019 offense certainly has the talent and skill to win the Heisman, as well as other awards, but as we’ve seen lately, it takes more than that to win the Heisman, especially as a running back.
The last running back to win a Heisman was Alabama’s Derrick Henry in 2015. That year, he rushed for 2,219 yards, which is more than twice what Swift rushed for last season. He also scored 28 touchdowns, almost three times as many as Swift. The last running back before him was Mark Ingram, also from Alabama. Ingram rushed for 1,658 in 2009 with 17 touchdowns, but he added 334 received yards with another three scores.
For running backs, it takes freakish stats to win the Heisman Trophy. It’s difficult these days for running backs to stand out over quarterbacks, especially mobile quarterbacks with outstanding rushing totals. Reggie Bush had 2,218 yards of total offense (1,740 rushing, 478 receiving). Ricky Williams and Ron Dayne both eclipsed 2,000 rushing yards when they won the Heisman in 1998 and 1999 respectively. As did Rashad Salaam in 1994, and Eddie George had over 2,000 yards of total offense after adding 417 receiving yards to his 1,927 rushing yards. Is D’Andre Swift capable of such a season in 2019?
He certainly is. Remember, Swift wasn’t at full health until the last half of the 2018 season. Groin surgery limited his ability at the beginning of the year, and he even had to sit out most of the Middle Tennessee State game. Despite his injury, he still averaged 5.1 yards per carry through the first seven games. He used the bye week after the LSU loss to return to full health and the result was four 100-yard games in Georgia’s next five outings. The only game in that stretch where he didn’t reach 100 yards was the UMass game, where he left early due to Georgia already having an insurmountable lead.
Against Florida, he had 8.7 yards per carry. He embarrassed Kentucky and Auburn defenders to combine for 342 yards in those two matchups. He also had a YAC average of 10.36 yards. When the regular season ended, Swift had 6.9 yards per carry in the 2018 regular season.
To show how his usage increased after the bye week, before the break, Swift averaged 10.14 carries per game. After the break, and through the Sugar Bowl, Swift’s attempts per game average increased to 13.14. Given that Swift’s YAC average in the last half of the season was 7.46 yards per carry, we can determine that had Swift been healthy all year long, he would have averaged around 98.12 yards per game and would have ended the season in the neighborhood of 1,373.7 rushing yards.
That’s as a sophomore, starting at running back for the first time in his career and sharing a workload with junior Elijah Holyfield. While it’s true that Swift will be joined this year by an experienced James Cook and a healthy Zamir White, neither of them have proven to carry the workload against good SEC defenses. It’s going to take a lot for Cook and White to cut into Swift’s carries.
But they’ll certainly keep Swift from reaching the 2,000-yard threshold that seems to be the target for running backs with Heisman Trophy aspirations. Good thing for him, he’s a good target in the passing game and is used as such by Georgia’s coaches. After catching 32 passes for 297 yards in 2018, Swift’s career receiving totals are very good for a running back; 49 catches, 450 yards and four touchdowns.
And now with Georgia’s best screen pass receiver (Mecole Hardman) gone to the NFL, opportunities on those types of plays open up for Swift. Combine all the different ways Georgia will try to get the ball to him, with the variety of ways he’ll avoid defenders, Swift will have no shortage of “Heisman” moments.
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Ultimately, Swift has the everything the Heisman voters want. He’s not just a bruiser or a scat back. He’s a bit of both. He shows power through the middle and can suddenly cut around defenders without losing speed in open space. The only thing Swift will need to win the Heisman over someone else is stats, and that’ll all depend on how much Georgia uses him and if he can stay healthy.