Advertisement

Notre Dame’s best player robbed of national award

Just when you think a postseason college football award couldn’t get any more ridiculous it goes and outdoes itself in a truly unimaginable fashion.  One year after the two best tight ends in the country (Michael Mayer and Brock Bowers) weren’t even voted to be finalists for the John Mackey Award (best tight end), the award was given to the wrong person.

The 2022 Mackey Award went to Brock Bowers of Georgia.  This post isn’t meant to rip Bowers in any capacity.  The guy has been beast-like for the Bulldogs the last two seasons and has speed that tight ends simply aren’t supposed to have.  He’s an incredible tight end, but he wasn’t the best in college football this season.

You can go into film breakdown and see that Michael Mayer does the things that don’t show up on a stat-sheet better than Bowers.  Mayer is a far better blocker, better at making contested catches, and played the year with far less weaponry around him than Bowers did.

Yet the stats read out as follows:

Bowers: 52 receptions, 726 yards, 6 touchdowns
Mayer: 67 receptions, 809 yards, 9 touchdowns

As you can probably guess, Notre Dame players and fans weren’t too pleased with how the voting went.  Here are how just some reacted to the blatant miss by Mackey Award voters.

Brady Quinn

Brady Quinn...again

Julian Love

Logan Diggs

Tom Mendoza

Bryan Driskell

Adam Rittenberg

Robby Toma

Nathan Erbach

Notre Dame Recruiting

4 Horsemen Podcast

Barstool Irish

Notre Dame Football Stats & Analytics

Tyler James

Darin Pritchett/Tim Murray

My final thoughts

Listen, if they didn’t want to give it to Mayer then at least give it to the next most deserving candidate.  You could argue Bowers wasn’t even the best tight end on his own team, let alone nationally.

I have votes for various postseason awards but the Mackey Award is not one of them.  Had I had one I would have had Mayer at the top of my list and Dalton Kincaid, who rivaled Mayer the closest statistically this season would have been my second choice.  Yet he wasn’t even a finalist somehow.

I never want to be the “there’s an agenda against Notre Dame!” guy but this is just as bad as when Quenton Nelson somehow didn’t win the Outland Trophy in 2017.

Ridiculous.

Story originally appeared on Fighting Irish Wire