FSU Football: Several Nole players on national award watchlists

McKenzie Milton- Davey O’Brien Award, Maxwell Award, National Performer of the Year

Everyone in college football knows McKenzie Milton. His incredible story combined with his incredible talent means it’s easy to become a fan. His interviews are informative, and he has seemed to take to the FSU system well.

Overall, a great dude and a great player; but the likelihood of him achieving a place on the podium greatly depends on how healthy he is and if that correlates to him usurping Jordan Travis as QB1.

He has yet to play a down in Garnet and Gold, but his spring game performance has everyone buzzing around his name, and his previous stats back it up. He leads his UCF squad to an undefeated season and national title claim in 2017.

At UCF, he totaled 8,600 passing yards, 72 passing touchdowns, and 22 interceptions. On the ground, he may not be the same player due to his injury. Milton added 20 rushing touchdowns, 1,068 rushing yards, all on 285 total attempts. (via ESPN)

The variable of the injury and Milton’s change of scenery gives me hesitation on his award prospects. I can foresee a timeshare between Jordan Travis and Milton, but the problem here is that many of his competitors do not have to share time. The Davey O’Brien award is for quarterbacksy, and I don’t see him getting it because of these question marks.

If he can’t win the QB job, I seriously doubt he will win the Maxwell, which correlates to the best overall player in college football. However, the language of the National Performer of the Year gives Milton a strong chance as it uses advanced scientific metrics to determine the extent of the player’s contributions to the effectiveness of the team.

He would be directly competing with Heisman candidates, and these awards are reserved as sentimental tokens for the runner-ups, so unless FSU goes 15-0 and Milton is at the helm, I don’t feel good about this.