No Game Monday. The Heisman Race Moved Anyway.

A Monday with no football in it

There was no FBS game on Monday night. Not a quiet one, not a bad one — none. The only college football on the schedule was a junior varsity game in Texas. November Mondays are like that: the sport catches its breath between a Saturday that rearranged the Playoff picture and a Tuesday that starts handing out the receipts.

And still, the sport moved. A Heisman favorite changed. A coordinator lost his job at a top-12 program. A starting quarterback’s future became a negotiation. If you only watch college football on Saturdays, you missed a day of it.

Carr takes the Heisman lead

The biggest move came out of South Bend, where the odds finally caught up to Saturday night. CJ Carr is the new Heisman Trophy favorite at +130, according to DraftKings odds reported by ESPN’s Doug Greenberg — ahead of Miami’s Darian Mensah at +280 and Ohio State receiver Jeremiah Smith at +410. Polymarket’s numbers, via On3, tell the same story: Carr at a 32% chance, Mensah at 26%.

The case is one game tall, and it is a very good game. Carr went 29-of-40 for 319 yards and three touchdowns as Notre Dame beat No. 1 Miami 31–24, leading by as many as 21 before Miami’s comeback ran out of clock. Mensah threw for 276 yards and three touchdowns of his own in the loss — and still woke up Monday as the second choice, which is how this award works: the trophy follows the winner of the biggest game until somebody takes it back.

Carr’s season line — 67.6% completions, 2,168 yards, 21 touchdowns against a single interception — now gets three weeks to breathe. Notre Dame’s remaining schedule is the friendly part, and the Irish’s ranking question gets its next answer Tuesday night, when the selection committee releases the second of its six rankings. We laid out yesterday what the committee has to decide about a team that just beat its No. 1.

Columbus answers for the fake punt

Ohio State fired first-year special teams coordinator Robby Discher on Monday, ESPN reported, via Reuters. The No. 12 Buckeyes are 6–3, and the moment that ended Discher’s season is easy to find on the film: in Saturday’s 41–28 home loss to No. 23 Oregon, the Ducks trailed 14–3 in the second quarter, faced fourth-and-9 from their own 31 — and converted a fake punt. The game turned there and never turned back.

One play does not get a coordinator fired by itself. A season does: Ohio State ranks 102nd nationally in special teams efficiency. Discher arrived from Illinois, where he coached special teams and tight ends from 2023 to 2025. Ryan Day made the call on a Monday, which is when these calls get made — quietly, and with three games left to fix the unit before it costs them another one.

Retention season has already started

The most modern story of the day came from Starkville, where Mississippi State coach Jeff Lebby confirmed the Bulldogs are negotiating to keep quarterback Kamario Taylor — next season, not this one. Taylor, a sophomore, has been out since foot surgery on October 28 and will not play again this year. He is not draft-eligible until 2028, so his choice is Mississippi State or the transfer portal, which opens January 4.

“We’re always talking about retention,” Lebby said on Monday, in the Clarion Ledger’s report. “We’re going to continue to talk about that huge piece of it and we’re right in the middle of those things right now.”

That is November now. Taylor opened the season 4–0 as a first-year starter and drew Heisman mentions of his own; Mississippi State has lost five straight without him and sits 4–5 heading into Saturday’s home game against Auburn. The Bulldogs’ most important recruiting battle this winter is not for a high school senior. It is for the quarterback already in their building — and their head coach just said so out loud.

Tuesday brings the football back

The pause ends Tuesday, all at once. Three MAC games kick off the week’s slate — Western Michigan (6–3) at Akron (1–8) and Kent State (3–6) at Bowling Green (2–7) at 4 p.m. PT, then Ohio (7–2) at Miami (Ohio) (5–4) at 5 p.m. PT — while the Playoff committee unveils its second rankings of the season the same night. Georgia, Utah and a 9–0 UCLA team the computers still do not believe in all get their new numbers. Monday was the quiet day. It was also, somehow, a full one.

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