Versatile said:
The Tyrann Mathieu love is just obnoxious, and I'm as big an SEC fanboi as there is on this board. He was suspended for a game. He almost blew the Alabama game. He's not the best cornerback on his own team.
I humbly, and heartily, disagree.
I don't think Mathieu should, or will, win the Heisman. Yes, he was suspended for a game as you note, though so was LaMichael James when he was a finalist last year. And that came in the middle of a three-game midseason funk, in which he played poorly against Tennessee, was suspended against Auburn and only played so-so against Alabama. (Though I'm hard-pressed to remember how he "almost blew" the Bama game.) Also he often talks way, way too much on the field.
But I was pleasantly surprised that Mathieu was named a finalist. For one thing, it at least throws a bone to the notion that the Heisman is what it pretends to be, i.e. the award for the top college football player in the nation, rather than what it actually is, which is an award for the top QB/RB.
More than that, though, Mathieu has made an incredible number of high-impact plays this season, especially for a 5-9, 175-pound player who, as you note, isn't even the best pure cover cornerback on his team. (That's Mo Claiborne. But what does that matter?)
In arguably four of LSU's five toughest games this year (Oregon, West Virginia, Arkansas and Georgia, but not Alabama) he turned in at least one huge momentum-shifting play. Vs Oregon, he stripped-and-scored while covering a punt when LSU trailed 6-3. At West Virginia, he blitzed, batted a ball in the air, picked it and ran it back to the 1 right before the half to set up a TD that broke the game open. That was after stripping the ball and recovering it earlier.
Vs. Arkansas, he moved to free safety for the first time in his career, a position he had never even practiced until that week, to replace the injured Eric Reid, then led the team with 10 tackles, ran back a punt 92 yards for the tying score, and forced two fumbles, the first of which he recovered to set up the go-ahead score.
Against Georgia, with the offense struggling to an historically poor start, he scored the first TD on a punt return, set up the second with a fumble recovery at the Georgia 31, and set up the third with a 40-something yard return through the entire Bulldog team to the 17-yard line. Ballgame.
He also made some crazy highlight-reel plays against Kentucky (linked earlier this thread, I believe, a sick sack-strip-scoop-score) and an impressive INT in the EZ vs. Florida. In fact he's been making big plays since his very first game last year as a true freshman, when he had his first sack-strip-recovery late in the fourth quarter against North Carolina.
The guy just has a knack for making huge plays. Especially for a player his size, it's just incredible. He broke the LSU career record for forced fumbles 4-5 games into this season, his second, and has added at least three since then.
I find it hard to believe that any objective observer could have watched both the LSU-Arkansas and LSU-Georgia games, say, and not come away thinking Mathieu was one of the five most valuable/dynamic players in college football this season. I think he's absolutely deserving of the trip to New York as the most influential player on the No. 1 team.
Of course, if one's primary exposure to Mathieu was the LSU-Alabama game, then it's understandable one would think he's all hype.