Jeremiyah Love Finishes Third in Heisman
NEW YORK, Dec. 13, 2025. Jeremiyah Love's remarkable junior season ended one step short of the sport's highest individual honor on Saturday night, as the Notre Dame running back finished third in Heisman Trophy voting behind Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza and Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia. Ohio State quarterback Julian Sayin rounded out the group of four finalists in fourth place.
Mendoza, who led Indiana to a 13 and 0 record and the program's first Big Ten title since 1945, won comfortably with 2,362 points and 643 first place votes out of a possible 930 ballots. Pavia finished second with 1,435 points and 189 first place votes. Love, the only non quarterback among this year's finalists, tallied 719 points, but he outpolled every other candidate not named Mendoza or Pavia in first place votes, receiving 46 of them, along with 157 second place votes and an FBS leading 267 third place votes. According to the official tallies released by the Heisman Trust, Love actually finished third in every one of the award's five geographic voting regions, a testament to how broadly his candidacy resonated across the country even though it never seriously threatened the two front runners.
A Historic Season, Told in Numbers
Love's case for the trophy rested on an unusual combination of efficiency and moments that simply could not be replicated by anyone else in the country. He finished the regular season with 199 carries for 1,372 yards, an average of 6.9 yards every time he touched the ball, and 18 rushing touchdowns. He added 27 receptions for 280 yards and three more scores through the air, giving him 1,652 yards from scrimmage and 21 total touchdowns for the season, the most in a single season in Notre Dame history.
He scored a touchdown in every game but one and found the end zone in eleven consecutive contests to close the year, a streak that became one of the signature story lines of the entire 2025 season. Notre Dame analysts pointed out that his raw workload actually understated his effectiveness, since Love shared carries all year with Jadarian Price, a talented back in his own right, and rarely saw the twenty five carry workloads that traditionally pad a Heisman resume. Instead, Love simply made the most of the touches he got. His signature performance came on October 18 against USC, when he carried the ball 24 times for 228 yards, a 9.5 yard average, and a touchdown, while adding 37 receiving yards on five catches in one of the best individual performances by any player in the country all season.
His defining moment, however, arrived in the regular season finale against Stanford on November 29. A first quarter touchdown run made him Notre Dame's all time single season leader in total touchdowns with 21, surpassing the mark of 20 set by the legendary Jerome Bettis back in 1991. That same score was also his 18th rushing touchdown of the year, tying Audric Estime's single season program record and making Love the first player in Notre Dame history to record multiple seasons with 17 or more rushing touchdowns. The achievement came at a cost. Later in that same game, Love absorbed a knee to the ribs from a Stanford defender well after the whistle had blown, an unnecessary hit that knocked him out of the contest for a stretch. At the time, Love had climbed to as high as second in national Heisman odds, and many observers believe the injury, along with the underwhelming final stat line it produced against a struggling Stanford defense, effectively ended any realistic chance he had of catching Mendoza or Pavia in the closing days of the voting period.
Love closed out his decorated season by becoming the first running back in Notre Dame history to win the Doak Walker Award, given annually to the nation's top running back, beating out finalists Ahmad Hardy of Missouri and Kewan Lacy of Ole Miss. He was also named a First Team All American and was a finalist for the Walter Camp Player of the Year and Maxwell Award. Shortly after the season concluded, Love declared for the 2026 NFL Draft, where analysts widely project him to be the first running back selected, with several outlets comparing his blend of vision, contact balance, and receiving ability to Saquon Barkley's game as a prospect.
Where the Season Ranks Historically
Love's 2025 campaign stands among the finest in Notre Dame history, even though it fell short of the sport's ultimate individual prize. The Fighting Irish have produced seven Heisman winners across their long football history: quarterback Angelo Bertelli in 1943, quarterback Johnny Lujack in 1947, end Leon Hart in 1949, halfback John Lattner in 1953, quarterback Paul Hornung in 1956, quarterback John Huarte in 1964, and flanker Tim Brown in 1987. Notre Dame players have finished in the top five of Heisman voting 26 times across program history, but finalist appearances have grown rare in the modern, four person format. Love became just the second Notre Dame Heisman finalist since linebacker Manti Te'o's runner up finish in 2012, and the first Notre Dame offensive skill position player to reach the ceremony in more than a decade.
Statistically, Love's 1,372 rushing yards rank fourth all time in a single season at Notre Dame, trailing only Vagas Ferguson's 1,437 yards in 1979, Josh Adams' 1,430 yards in 2017, and Allen Pickett's 1,394 yards in an earlier era of Notre Dame football. Yet no Notre Dame running back has ever produced as many total touchdowns in a single season as Love's 21, and his back to back campaigns of at least 1,100 rushing yards, 17 or more rushing touchdowns, and a 6.9 yards per carry average across both his sophomore and junior seasons have no real precedent in the program's history for that combination of volume, efficiency, and touchdown production sustained over consecutive years.
Nationally, some commentators noted that Love's raw rushing total was modest compared to past Heisman finalist running backs, observing that his 1,372 yards were the fewest for a finalist running back since Anthony Davis rushed for 1,354 yards as the 1974 runner up. That critique, while statistically accurate, tended to overlook the context of how Notre Dame deployed him. Love was never used as a bell cow workhorse in the traditional sense. He was instead the most explosive weapon in a deep, rotational Notre Dame backfield, and his per touch production, highlight reel long runs, and touchdown rate placed him in rare company regardless of his overall carry total.
What Marcus Freeman Said About His Star
Throughout the season, head coach Marcus Freeman never hesitated to make the case for his star running back, both to reporters and, by his own account, to Love himself. After Notre Dame's win over Navy in November, a reporter asked Freeman directly whether Love belonged in the Heisman conversation. Freeman did not equivocate.
"In my mind, yes, he is. There's no question about it," Freeman said. "You talk about one of the best players in the country. If he's not one of them, then it's hard to believe how many other players are that special." Freeman added that Love's week to week consistency had become almost unremarkable to those around the program, even as it continued to astonish outside observers. "He's a special player, and he had a great week of prep," Freeman said. "He continues to do things that maybe you haven't seen, but you're not surprised with Jeremiyah."
Freeman also spoke at length about the nuances of Love's game that rarely showed up in highlight packages, pointing specifically to the running back's ability to turn what should have been a loss into a positive gain through contact balance and vision. "The balance, the ability to jump over you and the ability to run through you. Some of his most impressive runs aren't the ones you just see on TV," Freeman said. "They're the ones that, when you watch the film, you're like, he made that play for a four yard gain that should have been a two yard loss." On other occasions, Freeman went so far as to call Love "a unicorn," suggesting the back's blend of speed, patience, and receiving skill was rare enough that he could have played wide receiver at a high level had his path in football gone differently.
In the aftermath of Notre Dame's disappointing exclusion from the 2025 College Football Playoff field despite a ten game winning streak, Love later revealed that Freeman's message to the team centered on using the disappointment as fuel rather than dwelling on what had been lost. Love carried that same message into the postseason awards circuit, downplaying his own individual accolades and deflecting attention from his own impending departure to the NFL in favor of crediting his teammates and coaching staff for the season's success.
What It Means for Notre Dame
Love's three seasons in South Bend, capped by an appearance in the 2025 College Football Playoff National Championship Game as a sophomore and a Heisman finalist turn as a junior, leave him with career totals of 2,882 rushing yards, the seventh most in Notre Dame history, along with 594 receiving yards and 42 total touchdowns. Across his sophomore and junior seasons combined, Love produced 3,014 yards from scrimmage and 40 total touchdowns, numbers that place him firmly among the most productive two year stretches by any running back in program history, even accounting for the fact that he shared touches with Price throughout.
For a program that has long defined itself by its history at running back and by its deep tradition of Heisman contenders, Love's ascent from a lightly recruited prospect out of Miami to one of the most decorated players in Notre Dame history represents both a continuation of that legacy and something close to a new standard for what the position can look like at the school. Analysts have compared his blend of explosiveness and versatility to former Notre Dame wide receiver Will Fuller, and some have argued he is the most electrifying offensive player the program has produced in years.
He leaves a Notre Dame program still processing the sting of missing the 2025 College Football Playoff field despite winning ten straight games following an 0 and 2 start to the season, a stretch of football in which Love's individual brilliance did as much as anything to keep the Fighting Irish's season alive and relevant. His combination of production, resilience after injury, and a flair for the moment leaves him remembered not simply as a great Notre Dame running back, but as one of the most electric and consequential players to wear the uniform in the modern era of the program, a player whose Heisman snub, in the end, may say less about the level of his season and more about how difficult it has become for a running back to win the award in an age dominated by quarterbacks.
