Teddy Bridgewater Makes Heisman Push Against Eastern Kentucky

It’s only the second week of the college football season, but Teddy Bridgewater is already making his case for the Heisman Trophy.

It may be a little premature to start talking about the Heisman at this point in the season, but this goes back to his underrated performance last season. Bridgewater finished last season with a 68.5 percent completion percentage along with 27 TDs and eight interceptions. He also had a dominating Sugar Bowl performance against the Florida Gators.

Against Eastern Kentucky, he threw for 397 yards with four TDs and no interceptions. He also played deep into the fourth quarter, throwing a TD pass with nine minutes left in a 37-7 blowout and showing that he wants to put up the individual numbers needed to own the trophy.

It’s common practice in college football to set up a few games against the weaker FBS teams or even some FCS teams. A lot of these games are used to work on things before teams get into conference play, rest their players and get a few easy wins. The other thing these games can be helpful for are padding players’ statistics and helping their Heisman push.

Against his three weakest opponents from last year, Bridgewater had a combined five TDs and three interceptions against Missouri State, Florida International University and Southern Mississippi. So far this year, in two games against Ohio and Eastern Kentucky, Bridgewater has a 76.7 completion percentage and nine TDs with only one interception.

With the Heisman trophy coming down to five or six quarterbacks this year, it will come down to team record and the final touchdown numbers. It’s hard to say a team will go undefeated, but Louisville may have the best chance to do so. They have zero ranked teams on their schedule and are definitely the best team in their Conference by a large margin.

If Bridgewater stays healthy, Louisville can find themselves either in the Sugar Bowl, Orange Bowl or even BCS Championship Game with a 12-0 team.

His major competitors for the Heisman this year are defending winner Johnny Manziel, Braxton Miller, Marcus Mariota, Tahj Boyd and Jameis Winston. There is a good chance that none of those teams will go undefeated, and each will have a few poor games against the more difficult teams in their conference.

If Bridgewater can continue on this pace, he won’t only be holding the Heisman trophy in December, but maybe a bigger piece of hardware in January.