Heisman Odds Shift as Malachi Toney Closes In on Jeremiah Smith After Record Day Against Pitt

Malachi Toney turned a Heisman Trophy conversation into a genuine race on Saturday. The Miami sophomore caught a school-record 16 passes for 194 yards and three touchdowns in the top-ranked Hurricanes’ 52-23 win over Pitt, and the market responded: Toney now sits at +370 to win the Heisman, behind only Ohio State’s Jeremiah Smith (+120) and his own quarterback, Darian Mensah (+290), per FanDuel odds.

The timing matters. Smith and Ohio State were on a bye in Week 8, and a chaotic weekend knocked out several of the other names that had been circulating near the top of the board. When the dust settled, the two Hurricanes were the only players making real noise, and the gap to the front-runner is narrower than it was a few weeks ago.

Toney and Mensah Turn Pitt Into a Showcase

Toney’s 16 receptions broke a Miami single-game record, surpassing the 13 he caught against Pitt a year ago. Twelve of those catches came in the first half, good for 159 yards, which matched the Panthers’ entire first-half offensive output. He added two punt returns for 28 yards and now leads all of FBS with 66 receptions. Through seven games he has 952 receiving yards and 11 touchdowns, and he has topped 100 yards in five of them. His Week 1 performance against Stanford, 12 catches for 234 yards and three scores, had already set a school mark for single-game receiving yards.

Mensah was every bit as efficient, completing 31 of 37 passes for 387 yards and four touchdowns while adding 16 rushing yards. Three of those scoring throws went to Toney. The pairing is the central reason Miami has held the No. 1 ranking, and it is also the central problem for anyone trying to rank them individually. Voters in The Athletic’s Heisman poll have Smith first, Toney second with two first-place votes, and Mensah fourth, and the poll’s author noted that unless Mensah outplays Toney over the final six weeks, the trophy looks headed to a wide receiver.

Smith remains the standard. The Ohio State star was a near-unanimous choice just a couple of weeks ago, and his back-to-back 200-yard games earlier this season made the race look settled. The difference now is that he cannot add to his résumé this week, while Toney and Mensah can keep stacking highlights against a schedule that is about to get harder.

What the Heisman Market Is Saying

The price movement tells the story better than any poll. Earlier this month Smith was a heavy favorite at -220, an implied probability of roughly 69 percent. By the middle of last week he had drifted to +122, around 45 percent, with Mensah at +290 and Toney at +350. After Saturday, the current FanDuel board has Smith at +120, Mensah at +290 and Toney at +370, so the favorite has held steady while the Miami pair has stayed clustered right behind him. Toney’s slightly longer number reflects the market’s long-standing preference for quarterbacks and the fact that his production is shared with the player throwing him the ball.

Beyond the top three, the board falls off a cliff. Notre Dame quarterback CJ Carr is next at +1900, followed by Oregon State receiver Jesse Legree at +2200, Ole Miss quarterback Trinidad Chambliss at +3000 and Oklahoma State’s Drew Mestemaker at +4000. Georgia’s Gunner Stockton is at +5000, and LSU’s Sam Leavitt is among the longshots at +10000. That gap is a signal of how thin the field has become after a weekend in which five ranked teams lost to unranked opponents and Ole Miss and Houston also fell.

Miami’s Title Odds and the Notre Dame Test

The Heisman market and the national championship market are tightly linked for Miami. Despite sitting at No. 1, the Hurricanes are +650 to win the national title at FanDuel, behind Georgia (+420), Notre Dame (+470) and Ohio State (+500), and their number did not move after the Pitt win. Prediction markets have a similar picture, with Georgia leading and Miami priced in the same neighborhood as Notre Dame. The reason is schedule: the Hurricanes visit No. 5 Notre Dame in under two weeks, and the market is treating that game as the one that can reshape both races.

That is also why Mensah’s Heisman case may be the most volatile on the board. A dominant showing in South Bend would likely push him past Smith as the favorite, while a loss would hand Smith breathing room and could cool the entire Miami push. Toney’s path is steadier. He has a Heisman-caliber number almost every week, and next up is a trip to North Carolina and a Bill Belichick defense, a matchup that tests whether his production travels against a well-coached secondary.

For anyone tracking futures, the practical takeaway is that Miami’s two stars are priced as close but distinct candidates, and their prices will likely move together on the same results. Smith’s bye-week stability is real, but his quarterback situation without Julian Sayin adds a variable the market has not fully settled. Six regular-season weeks remain, and every one of them can move these numbers.