No one is out here making any guarantees that Auburn football QB Bo Nix will take home the Heisman Trophy.
That said, you won’t catch Jake “Jboy” Crain making the inverse guarantee that he won’t come close, either.
As a former 5-star recruit, Nix brought with him the pedigree of a son of a former Tigers starter under center and a lifetime of training for this moment. Through his first two years on the Plains, Nix proved incapable of winning a bowl game, but also incapable of bringing them to one of higher significance.
Accuracy issues have been a problem–and we’d be remiss if we didn’t include the lack of adequate pass protection–but Nix still has shown flashes (hello Alabama) of being the guy that can do all of those things.
Crain had DBL Sports Live’s Jim Dunaway on the Jboy Show, and in discussing Nix, he refused to shut the door on his talents shining through and earning him a seat at the Heisman ceremony in New York this winter:
Crain cited Nix’s pedigree and raised the possibility that Nix was suffering from a sophomore slump in his unusual second season with the Tigers.
Meanwhile, Dunaway was high on the fact that Mike Bobo’s offensive schemes will be more familiar to the way Bo was taught by his father, former Auburn quarterback Patrick Nix, than Gus Malzahn’s were.
With TJ Finley now behind him on the depth chart and the head coach that recruited him now coaching 372 miles southeast in Orlando, Nix doesn’t have the security he once did as the locked in starter.
He’ll need to earn his spot, with Bryan Harsin calling for competition up and down the depth chart ahead of his first season.
Time will tell if Nix and the Heisman deserve to share space in the same sentence this season, but the Jboy is on board with a junior year breakout for the second generation Auburn football signal caller.