Every Heisman campaign needs a story. For Arch Manning, it is legacy. For Cade Klubnik, redemption. For Jeremiyah Love, it is disruption.
The Notre Dame running back enters 2025 not as a preseason favorite, but as the Heisman race’s main disruptor, ready to shake the balance of power. In a sport dominated by quarterbacks, Love dares to remind us that sometimes the most electrifying plays are carved out of chaos, forged between the tackles, and defined by the sheer will to move bodies that don’t want to be moved.
Numbers that point to greatness
Last season, Love rushed for 1,125 yards and 17 touchdowns, averaging a staggering 6.9 yards per carry. Those numbers alone would crown him among the elite, but numbers rarely capture the poetry of his runs. Love is equal parts fluidity and ferocity, a back who can glide through daylight or bulldoze through would-be tacklers.
The Irish leaned on him in the most critical moments, and he answered with bursts that broke defensive backs’ angles and surges that carried entire piles forward.
The Penn State run
In the ledger of Love’s young career, one play has already taken on mythic resonance: his two-yard touchdown run against Penn State. It was not a long gallop, not a highlight made for social media, but a stubborn, soul-defining push through defenders that refused to let him breathe. Two yards. That was all. But in those two yards, Love displayed what separates contenders from legends—the refusal to be denied.
Ask Notre Dame fans, and they’ll tell you it felt like more than a score. It was a declaration: this team, this back, would not be bullied.
The road ahead
Now, as the 2025 season begins, Love steps into a brighter light. He is being called the best running back in college football, and with that comes expectation—the kind of expectation that weighs heavy but also polishes diamonds. He knows the odds. Running backs have been overshadowed in recent Heisman races. But odds are meant to be defied, and history remembers the ones who seize their moment.
For Love, that means stringing together not just big games, but unforgettable ones. A breakaway sprint against Miami. A bruising performance under the primetime lights vs. Texas A&M. A play—like that two-yard fight in the end zone—that can be replayed for decades, etched in the collective memory of the sport.
Playing spoiler
Arch Manning may carry Texas. Cade Klubnik may restore Clemson. But Jeremiyah Love has the power to spoil them both, to cut through the quarterback narrative and stake his claim as the best player in college football.
Every Heisman race needs its spoiler, its wild card, its force that makes the script bend in unexpected directions. In 2025, that force may wear the gold helmet of Notre Dame and answer to the name Jeremiyah Love.
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