Christian McCaffrey’s Heisman Trophy highlight reel was already running overtime before his coach called a pass play. A pass?
The Stanford running back — his listed position is woefully lacking as a proper description of his role — took a pitch from the Cardinal’s quarterback during a November game against Colorado at Folsom Field. He bound around the defense from that spot all season. This time, though, he threw a 28-yard touchdown pass.
And he spliced in another highlight on his reel.
For every hip shake and jersey juke and, sure enough, touchdown pass through a record-breaking season, McCaffrey rocketed from former Colorado high school star onto a shortlist of America’s best college football players.
Saturday night, at the Heisman Trophy’s 81st presentation ceremony in New York, the Valor Christian graduate fell short of winning college football’s highest individual award. Alabama junior running back Derrick Henry won the Heisman. McCaffrey finished second — Stanford’s fourth runner-up finish in the past seven seasons — followed by Clemson sophomore quarterback Deshaun Watson in third.
Henry, just the third running back to win the Heisman since 2000, received 378 first-place votes and 1,832 total points. McCaffrey received 290 first-place votes and 1,539 points.
McCaffrey became the fourth Stanford player to finish second in Heisman voting, joining John Elway (behind Herschel Walker in 1982), Toby Gerhart (behind Mark Ingram in 2009) and Andrew Luck (behind Cam Newton in 2010 and Robert Griffin III in 2011). Quarterback Jim Plunkett is the only Stanford winner of the Heisman, in 1970.
McCaffrey, a 19-year-old sophomore who was born in Denver, is the second son of Ed McCaffrey, a two-time Super Bowl champ- ion wide receiver with the Broncos. His mother, Lisa, played soccer at Stanford. His uncle, Billy, won a national championship in basketball at Duke. His grandfather, Dave Sime (Lisa’s father), was the silver medalist in the 100 meters at the 1960 Olympics.
“We never pushed him into playing any sports. We didn’t ask him to play football,” Ed McCaffrey said of Christian. “We just waited for him to ask us.”
The younger McCaffrey has 3,496 all- purpose yards this season, breaking an NCAA record set by NFL Hall of Famer Barry Sanders in 1988 with Oklahoma State. McCaffrey is the Pac-12 Conference’s offensive player of the year. He leads No. 5 Stanford in rushing (319 carries for 1,847 yards), receiving (41 catches for 540 yards), punt returns (14 for 67 yards) and kickoff returns (36 for 1,042 yards). He also has two touchdown passes, including one that helped Stanford beat USC in the Pac-12 title game.
He is a running back in the same way James Bond is a civil servant.
“There aren’t many positions the young man can’t play — I’d say offensive and defensive line are it,” Stanford coach David Shaw said in November. “He can play middle linebacker, fullback, receiver, quarterback. He’s a phenomenal football player.”
This year’s Heisman race became a regional rivalry. The SEC has been college football’s Tiffany league for years. And its games regularly air on national TV, giving its players more face time in front of voters.
That seemed to be a boon for Alabama’s Henry, a sturdy tailback who has 1,986 yards rushing, the most in FBS. The past two weeks he has carried the ball 90 times, including 44 attempts for 189 yards in Alabama’s SEC title game victory over Florida.
Henry became Alabama’s fifth Heisman finalist in the past seven years. He broke the SEC season rushing record, set by Walker the year the former Georgia star topped Elway for the Heisman.
Clemson’s Watson, playing in the Atlantic Coast Conference, has thrown for 3,512 yards and 30 touchdowns in leading the No. 1-ranked Tigers to an undefeated record.
McCaffrey, often playing on TV late on the East Coast, trails Henry at No. 2 in 2015 yards rushing with 1,847. But McCaffrey’s total all-purpose yards are more than 1,000 yards better than the next-closest player.
This year’s Heisman voting reflected the regional rivalries. McCaffrey won the West. But Henry won the South by a wide margin. He also carried the Midwest, Southwest, Mid-Atlantic and Northeast.
That November game in Boulder, a 42-10 Stanford win over the Buffaloes in which McCaffrey scampered for 220 all-purpose yards, was the Valor Christian product’s first on a Colorado field since 2013, when he ran for four TDs and led Valor to a fourth consecutive state championship.
He will return to Stanford next season as a junior — with another shot at the Heisman.
“Now I know what it takes,” McCaffrey said Friday. “Following with anything less than that is unacceptable for me.”
Nick Groke: ngroke@denverpost.com or @nickgroke
