No. 1 Miami Has Two Heisman Contenders: How Fans Can Back Toney and Mensah

Unbeaten, top-ranked Miami has two players in the thick of the 2026 Heisman Trophy race, and a record-setting afternoon against Pittsburgh pushed both of them closer to the front. Wide receiver Malachi Toney caught a school-record 16 passes and quarterback Darian Mensah threw for 387 yards in the Hurricanes' 52-23 win over Pitt on Oct. 24 at Hard Rock Stadium, improving Miami to 7-0.

ESPN's Bill Connelly wrote this week that Toney has turned what looked like a runaway race into a real one, and Miami fans can now weigh in directly: the Heisman Trust's season-long fan vote gives the public its own ballot in the final tally.

A record day against Pitt

Toney finished with 16 catches for 194 yards and three touchdowns against Pitt, according to CBS News Miami. The 16 receptions broke Miami's single-game record of 13, first set by Mike Harley against Duke in 2021 and matched by Toney against Pitt last season.

By ESPN's count, Toney caught 16 of the 17 passes thrown his way, on a week when Ohio State's Jeremiah Smith, the race's front-runner, was on a bye.

Mensah completed 31 of 37 passes for 387 yards and four touchdowns without an interception, according to WPLG Local 10. The win kept Miami at 5-0 in Atlantic Coast Conference play and atop the national rankings.

Pitt fell to 5-3 overall and 2-3 in the ACC with its third straight loss, CBS News Miami reported, and the Panthers are now 0-14-1 all time against teams ranked No. 1.

Two Hurricanes, two cases

The season numbers for Miami's pair, according to Local 10 and a game-by-game breakdown published by Yahoo Sports:

Mensah leads the country in ESPN's Total QBR, Connelly noted. Toney, meanwhile, has been the target of 38% of Mensah's passes and accounts for 40% of his completions, 44% of his passing yards and half of his touchdown passes, according to ESPN. Toney entered the Pitt game averaging 5.3 yards per route run, nearly matching Smith's 5.4.

Toney is already climbing Miami's career charts. He has 175 career receptions, according to Yahoo Sports, third in school history behind Xavier Restrepo's 200, and 2,163 receiving yards. He holds the program's single-season records for catches (109) and receiving yards (1,211), both set in 2025. His 21 career receiving touchdowns tie Restrepo for fourth in program history, behind Michael Irvin's 26, according to Yahoo Sports.

The single-season touchdown record is also within reach. Leonard Hankerson set the school mark with 13 receiving touchdowns in 2010, two more than Toney has with at least five regular-season games left.

ESPN: Toney is catching up

Connelly, who awards a weekly "Heisman of the Week" and tallies points over the season, ranked Toney second and Mensah third for Week 8, behind LSU quarterback Sam Leavitt. It was Toney's third appearance on the weekly list, and he has finished in the top three each time.

Connelly wrote that he has struggled with how to split credit between a potentially Heisman-worthy passer and a potentially Heisman-worthy receiver. Mensah has better betting odds, he noted, but he has been giving more credit to Toney, calling Mensah possibly the best quarterback in the country while suggesting Toney may be an even better receiver.

In Connelly's season-long points race, Toney trails only Smith:

The betting market has moved in Miami's direction as well. According to ESPN, Smith's DraftKings odds have drifted from -220 to +122 in a short span, with Mensah at +290 and Toney at +350. Connelly also raised the question of whether Smith can hold off the Miami duo while potentially catching passes from someone other than Ohio State quarterback Julian Sayin.

The rest of the field

Local 10 listed the other leading contenders as of Tuesday as Smith, Notre Dame quarterback CJ Carr, Oregon State receiver Jesse Legree, Ole Miss quarterback Trinidad Chambliss and Oklahoma State quarterback Drew Mestemaker.

Another Florida player made ESPN's weekly list. Florida Atlantic's Easton Messer ranked fourth for Week 8 after catching 12 passes for 162 yards and two touchdowns, rushing for two more scores and returning a punt 82 yards for a touchdown in the Owls' 51-49 win over Rice.

How Hurricanes fans can vote

The Heisman Trust is running its Heisman Hopefuls fan vote all season on the Heisman Hopefuls platform at hopefuls.heisman.com, the site Local 10 linked for fans who want to support Mensah and Toney. Here is how it works, according to details released when the platform launched:

• Fans can vote once a day, ranking their top three players on a 3-2-1 ballot.
• The daily votes are combined into a single official Fan Vote ballot, one of 931 ballots in the Heisman tabulation, alongside 870 media voters and the living former winners.
• The scoring is weighted to place more emphasis on performances later in the season.
• For the first time, the fan results will be revealed on conference championship weekend, before the official electorate votes.

Because the fans' choice counts as one ballot among hundreds, a flood of Miami votes will not decide the trophy on its own. But it does give Hurricanes supporters a public way to back two players who have powered an unbeaten start, and the early reveal means the fan result will be on record before the electors weigh in.

Miami has produced two Heisman winners, quarterbacks Vinny Testaverde in 1986 and Gino Torretta in 1992.

What's next

Miami's next chance to build the case comes on Halloween night. The Hurricanes play at North Carolina on Saturday, Oct. 31, at Kenan Stadium in Chapel Hill. Toney needs seven catches to pass Harley, who has 182, for second place on Miami's career receptions list, and he needs 48 receiving yards to reach 1,000 for the season.