playBill ConnellyOct 20, 2026, 07:00 AM ETCloseBill Connelly is a writer for ESPN. He covers college football, soccer and tennis. He has been at ESPN since 2019.Multiple AuthorsOpen Extended ReactionsAs of Saturday, everyone in the FBS has played at least half of its regular-season schedule. Exactly half of the 138 teams have played seven.
We have, in other words, passed the midway point of the campaign. Since virtually everything we will remember from the 2026 season hasn’t happened yet, I tend to enjoy a bit of commemoration.We might not know who will win the national title (especially after a genuinely stunning set of Week 7 results) or the Heisman or Coach of the Year awards. We might not have seen what will turn out to be the best games of the season. But we know what we’ve seen thus far, and we know who the best players have been.So here’s a celebration of what defined the first half of the 2026 campaign.Half-season Heisman: Jeremiah Smith, WR, Ohio StateWe’ll start with something pretty obvious.
We don’t know that Smith will win the Heisman yet, but even after a mere 68-yard performance against Indiana, the Ohio State receiver’s odds of winning the award, per DraftKings, are -110, equivalent to a 52% chance. There are challenges to come, but Smith has a better chance of winning than not.That’s backed up by my ongoing points race. This season, Heisman is running its Heisman Hopefuls Fan Vote all season long, with a platform that provides statistics, EA Sports ratings and other information. In that vein, I am once again awarding the Heisman every single week of the season and doling out weekly points, F1-style (10 points for first place, nine for second, and so on).
And Smith continues to lead the way.This week’s Heisman list, however, features a lot of repeat customers, guys who have made multiple appearances and could be ready to make pushes of their own. Smith will need a few more standout performances to take home the hardware.Half-season ‘Dog in Him’: Michael Hawkins Jr., QB, West VirginiaWe check in on the Heisman each week, but we’re to hand out some other midseason awards as well. And there’s only one place to start: the Dog in Him Award.1. Michael Hawkins Jr., West Virginia 2.
Cale Hellums, Army 3. Gio Lopez, Wake Forest 4. Aidan Chiles, Northwestern 5. Nick Poulos, OhioThe Dog in Him goes to the quarterback who best combines quality, physicality, improvisation and an occasional DIY mindset, and with two-time Dog in Him winner Diego Pavia out of eligibility, we’ll have a new winner this year.
It’s only the midway point, but to date the winner is obvious. Hawkins has been brilliant in running the show in Morgantown, and only a poor defense has stopped him from getting more love.All five of these QBs deserve celebration, though. Hellums has rushed for 730 yards and 13 touchdowns at the helm of Army’s option attack (he also has 358 passing yards and a solid 77.2 Total QBR), and despite a poor start the Black Knights are up to 3-1 in the American Conference. Lopez and Chiles, meanwhile, have been transformative figures for two of the best surprise stories of the season — Wake and Northwestern are a combined 11-2 with losses only to Miami and Indiana, respectively.
And somehow, despite being led by a third head coach in three seasons, Ohio is again unbeaten in the MAC and on pace for a great season thanks in part to Poulos, who missed three games after a nasty helmet-to-helmet collision against Jacksonville State but has been nearly perfect in two starts since.Half-season Defensive Heisman: Colin Simmons, DE, TexasOne of the main points of the Heisman Hopefuls campaign, and all the stats and EA ratings it provides, is to make sure the biggest award in the sport celebrates players from all positions. As someone still annoyed that Ndamukong Suh didn’t win the Heisman in 2009, I appreciate this. But my points race approach never seems to give proper credence to defenders, no matter how hard I try. So, let’s go ahead and hand out a defenders-only award.1.
DE Colin Simmons, Texas 2. OLB Sammy Omosigho, UCLA 3. S Dejuan Lane, Tennessee 4. LB Chris Cole, Georgia 5.
CB Brent Gordon Jr., LouisianaThe choice of Simmons is obvious — he’s sixth overall in the points race, and he was on pace to pull a Will Anderson Jr. until suffering a high ankle sprain Saturday. Anderson is the only power-conference defender to date with 30-plus TFLs (35 in 2021), and Simmons had 16 through six games. If he resumes full dominance in three to four games, however, he’ll still have a chance for a gaudy number.Again, though, others should be celebrated. Omosigho has been transformative for UCLA’s aggressive defense after coming over from Oklahoma, Cole is the best linebacker in college football, and Lane is a havoc stats collector — three INTs, four breakups, five TFLs for a defensive coordinator (Jim Knowles) who creates havoc as well as anyone in the sport.
And Gordon has topped even Simmons from the standpoint of havoc plays: The sophomore from Cecilia, Louisiana, has 5.5 TFLs and four run stops (pretty wild stuff from a guy who plays more than half his snaps at cornerback), but he also has two interceptions and a nation’s-best 12 pass breakups.Half-season Coach of the Year: Bob Chesney, UCLA1. Bob Chesney, UCLA 2. Jake Dickert, Wake Forest 3. Kalani Sitake, BYU 4.
Will Stein, Kentucky 5. Morgan Scalley, UtahFor all the ups and downs we’ve seen on the field recently, the top of the AP poll looks awfully familiar at the moment: Each of the top eight teams finished 11th or better in last year’s final poll, and the No. 10 team finished 14th. Granted, the order is surprising — Miami is No. 1 for the first time in 24 years, and No. 2 BYU hasn’t been that high in 42 years — but the teams certainly aren’t new.That makes UCLA’s presence at No. 9 (and an underrated No. 9 at that) all the more noticeable. The Bruins went 8-16 over the past two seasons, with an experiment at budget hiring — they gave former Bruins legend DeShaun Foster his first head coaching job — severely blowing up in the school’s face.
But hiring serial winner Chesney and giving him what he needed to sign a lovely transfer class produced an immediate turnaround.Chesney brought lots of his best players with him from James Madison (RB Wayne Knight, DE Sahir West, center Riley Robell, nickel Derrick Barksdale), but he also made inspired additions such as Omosigho, receivers Semaj Morgan (Michigan) and Brian Rowe Jr. (South Carolina), OT Hall Schmidt (Boise State) and DT Darold DeNgohe (Rutgers). And the guy who won big at Salve Regina, Assumption University, Holy Cross and JMU has nearly produced as many wins in one season as UCLA had in the past two.Chesney also barely earned the top spot here. Dickert has been otherworldly at Wake Forest, taking a program that had won eight games in two seasons and immediately winning nine in 2025. After massive roster turnover, his Demon Deacons were merely decent out of the gate, but they were great in the second half of a loss to Miami, and they’ve been on an elevator ride ever since.
They’ve won four straight games, overachieving against SP+ projections by an average of 24.2 points per game, and they’ve leaped from 63rd to 20th in SP+ in four weeks. They’re in a race with SMU for the second spot in the ACC championship game at the moment, and I really don’t think Miami would enjoy having to face them again.It doesn’t stop there, obviously. Sitake indeed has BYU up to No. 2 in the AP poll, Stein has made a series of bold calls in close games while engineering a 6-1 start at Kentucky, and succeeding the legendary Kyle Whittingham at Utah has proved to be no problem for Scalley thus far. The Utes are unbeaten and neck and neck with BYU and Texas Tech in the Big 12 race.Half-season Hard Job Coach of the Year: JaMarcus Shephard, Oregon StateIn last year’s Alternative Awards piece, I wanted to make sure the job Jason Eck had done in driving New Mexico — which had suffer
Leave a Reply