Clemson’s Harper a dark-horse Heisman candidate

By Chris Preston  |   Thursday, June 26, 2008  |  Comments( 4 )

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The 2008 college football season will be blessed with one of the finest crop of proven quarterbacks in recent memory. Florida's Tim Tebow, last year's Heisman Trophy winner, returns, as do West Virginia’s Pat White and Oklahoma’s Sam Bradford, last year’s national passer rating champ. So it’s easy to see how Clemson’s Cullen Harper might get overlooked in some of the preseason rags. But judging from Harper’s marked improvement as a junior, if that upward trend continues it would be just as easy to see him emerging as a Heisman dark-horse come November.

For starters, Harper threw fewer picks (six) in 2007 than anyone else in the country with as many pass attempts (433). His 140.96 passer rating was tops in the ACC – 13 points higher than the more heralded Matt Ryan – and 22nd nationally. Best of all, his 65.1 percent completion rate trailed only Colt Brennan, Chase Daniel, and Graham Harrell among quarterbacks with as many attempts as Harper, and it was identical to that of Brian Brohm. That’s some pretty elite company.

Furthermore, this season Harper will have weapons few teams in the country can match. Aaron Kelly is the ACC’s lone returning 1,000-yard receiver and tight end Tyler Grisham (653 yards on 63 catches in ’07) is the league’s fourth-leading reception returner. What will open up the passing game even more is the increasingly lethal backfield combo of James Davis – like Kelly, the ACC’s only returning 1,000-yard rusher – and C.J. Spiller, the league’s sixth-leading returning rusher (768 yards in ’07).

A byproduct of having all that veteran talent on offense, of course, is the fact that Harper’s team is shaping up as a legitimate national contender. As Harrell and Brohm learned last season, you can put up all the passing numbers in the world, but they rarely make you a true Heisman candidate unless your team is a national player. For evidence, you needn’t look further than Clemson’s own conference. Last year Ryan threw eight picks in his first eight games and had a pair of dreadful performances against N.C. State and Virginia Tech, but he remained a front-runner for the Heisman because Boston College was undefeated through those first eight games.

Similarly, if Clemson hangs around in the national title picture for at least part of the season, expect Harper to vault to the Heisman forefront.
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