Marvin Harrison Jr. and Tommy Eichenberg were both named as semifinalists for national player of the year awards on Monday.
Harrison is one of 17 semifinalists for the Maxwell Award, which honors college football’s most outstanding player, and Eichenberg is one of 20 semifinalists for the Chuck Bednarik Award, which recognizes college football’s most outstanding defensive player.
Both players are semifinalists for those respective awards for the second year in a row.
Harrison certainly ranks among the frontrunners for this year’s Maxwell Award – and the Heisman Trophy, for that matter – after his seventh 100-yard receiving game and fourth multi-touchdown game of the season against Michigan State on Saturday, in which he caught seven passes for 149 yards and two touchdowns and added a 19-yard touchdown run.
The Ohio State junior currently ranks seventh nationally with 1,063 receiving yards and second nationally with 12 receiving touchdowns and is widely considered to be the best wide receiver, if not the best player, in all of college football.
While players at all positions are eligible to win the Maxwell Award, all 17 players named as semifinalists on Monday are offensive skill-position players. Harrison is one of three wide receiver semifinalists along with LSU’s Malik Nabers and Missouri’s Luther Burden III.
The 2023 semifinalists for the 87th Maxwell Award for the Collegiate Player of the Year are here
— Maxwell Football (@MaxwellFootball) November 13, 2023
: https://t.co/DvapuYnj8m#MaxwellFootball pic.twitter.com/tNnWI6Jkuw
Eichenberg earned a spot among the Bednarik Award semifinalists for the second year in a row by recording a team-leading 75 tackles in Ohio State’s first nine games of the season, leading a defense that currently ranks second nationally in points allowed per game (9.9) and fourth in the FBS in yards allowed per game (262.2). He missed Ohio State’s most recent game against Michigan State with an arm injury, but Ryan Day expressed optimism on Saturday night that Eichenberg would be able to return soon, describing his status as “week-to-week.”
The Ohio State fifth-year senior is one of six linebacker finalists for the Bednarik Award along with Alabama’s Dallas Turner, Clemson’s Jeremiah Trotter Jr., N.C. State’s Payton Wilson, Old Dominion’s Jason Henderson and Texas A&M’s Edgerrin Cooper.
The 2023 semifinalists for the 29th Chuck Bednarik Award for the Outstanding Defensive Player of the Year are here
— Maxwell Football (@MaxwellFootball) November 13, 2023
: https://t.co/DvapuYnj8m#MaxwellFootball pic.twitter.com/VUl3ul3M4h
Three finalists for both the Maxwell and Bednarik Award will be named on Nov. 28, while the winners of both awards will be named during ESPN’s College Football Awards on Dec. 8.
