Last week, we tossed out a season-high 15 “Game Balls” to recognize the top individual performances from the CFP quarterfinals and the second half of bowl season, covering a lot of ground and superlative efforts.
We’ll balance that out by going with just six Game Balls this time while focusing just on the two College Football Playoff semifinals games last week — Miami’s dramatic 31-27 win over Ole Miss and Indiana’s 56-22 romp of Oregon.
(And then we’ll wrap it up with a few final honorees next week after the national championship game between Indiana and Miami.)
These were the six best individual performances — three from each game — on the biggest stage of the college football season so far (listed alphabetically as always).
Miami QB Carson Beck
Beck was more of a complementary piece to Miami’s first two playoff wins, passing for just 103 yards vs. Texas A&M and 138 vs. Ohio State with the defense carrying the Hurricanes. But the sixth-year senior stepped more into the spotlight in the semifinals, completing 23 of 37 passes for 268 yards, 2 TDs, 1 INT and the game-winning rushing TD with 18 seconds remaining.
The moment completed the career arc for Beck, who carried the perception of being good during his time at Georgia but never quite good enough for the impossibly-high standards he stepped into, taking over at QB after his predecessor Stetson Bennet IV led the Bulldogs to back-to-back national titles.
Georgia missed the then-four-team playoff in Beck’s first year as the starter in 2023, and he then sustained a season-ending elbow injury before the team’s playoff appearance the next year.
Beck’s lone season in Miami was up-and-down, but he played his best down the stretch to help get the Hurricanes into the CFP (barely) and made some big plays with his arm and his legs to outlast Ole Miss.
Miami RB Mark Fletcher Jr.
This entire postseason has a been a stock-raising showcase for Fletcher, who has been the engine of the Hurricanes’ offense with 395 rushing yards and 25 receiving yards and a TD in three games.
He’s been as reliable as any player on any team in the playoffs, rumbling for 172 yards on 10.1 yards per carry vs. Texas A&M to will Miami to just enough offense in that slugfest, 115 combined rushing/receiving yards and a TD vs. Ohio State and then 22 carries for 133 yards vs. the Rebels.
Fletcher is the physical tone-setter for the Hurricanes on offense, plain and simple.
Incredibly, 36.6% of his total 1,080 rushing yards this season have come in these three playoff games as he’s leveled up for the moment.
Miami WR Keelan Marion
After two seasons at UConn and two at BYU, Marion enjoyed a breakout season in his lone year with the Hurricanes, but the best performance of his collegiate career came in his biggest game (so far).
Marion had 7 catches for 114 yards with a 52-yard touchdown in the CFP semifinals win over Ole Miss.
It was his second 100-yard game of the season (3-116 and a TD vs. Syracuse), his third career 100-yard game and matched his career-high for 7 catches in a game while bringing his season-total to 56 catches for 740 yards and 2 TDs.
The long touchdown was his biggest play in that game, but Marion also had 3 catches for 36 yards on the game-winning drive. That included a pivotal 17-yard reception on third-and-10 that moved the chains and the Hurricanes all the way to the Ole Miss 18, and then an 11-yard pickup to the Rebels’ 8 with 31 seconds left. That helped set up Beck’s game-winning 3-yard TD run two plays later.
Indiana QB Fernando Mendoza
As much as we love to spread the appreciation around here, Mendoza doesn’t make it easy — it simply can’t be overstated how well he’s playing under the brightest of spotlights.
The Heisman Trophy winner completed 17 of 20 passes for 177 yards, 5 TDs and 0 INTS and scored those five touchdowns on Indiana’s first six possessions to stake the Hoosiers to a dominant 42-7 lead midway through the third quarter.
Including NFL-caliber throws like this …
As we’ve noted previously, those who noted that Mendoza’s overall season numbers (at the time of the award at least) didn’t measure up to other recent Heisman-winning QBs also didn’t take into account how rarely he needed to play four full quarters and how many totally one-sided blowouts Indiana’s remarkably balanced and deep team delivered.
If there was any question that Mendoza is the rightful Heisman winner, look no further than his performance in Indiana’s two playoff wins — a combined 31-of-36 passing with 8 TDs, 0 INTs and only 5 incompletions. Calling that elite efficiency still seems to be underselling it.
Indiana CB D’Angelo Ponds
NFL draft evaluators ding Ponds for his diminutive size at 5-foot-9, 170 pounds, but his stature as a premier playmaker cannot be denied.
Ponds punctuated another impressive season with the biggest play of his career, intercepting Oregon QB Dante Moore on the first play from scrimmage and returning it 25 yards for a tone-setting touchdown.
Ponds also had 6 tackles, which tied for the second-most among the Hoosiers.
The junior has 56 tackles, 2 INTs, 7 pass breakups, a forced fumble, a blocked kick and 4 tackles for loss this season — with stifling coverage overall — and was named an AP All-American second-team selection, which is effectively stating he was considered one of the four best cornerbacks in college football this year.
He earned second-team All-American honors from The Athletic, ESPN, the Football Writers Association of America and other outlets last season, First-Team All-Big Ten recognition both years with the Hoosiers and was selected an FWAA Freshman All-American in 2023 at James Madison.
That’s quite the resume — with his biggest moment yet coming in his biggest game.
Indiana WR Elijah Sarratt
Sarratt isn’t among the named mentioned when discussing the top wide receivers for the upcoming NFL draft. He’s not among the top 10 WRs on ESPN draft guru Mel Kiper Jr.’s “Big Board.”
And yet all he does is catch everything, make big plays and deliver consistently for the No. 1 team in college football.
Sarratt had 7 catches for 75 yards and 2 TDs in the Hoosiers’ romp over Oregon.
The senior has touchdown catches in nine straight games for that matter and 10 of the 12 he played in this season, including against Ohio State in the Big Ten championship game win and both playoff victories. He also had the game-winning 49-yard TD in the final 2 minutes to beat Iowa on the road in one of Indiana’s tightest tests of the season — a game in which he accounted for 156 of Mendoza’s 233 passing yards.
Sarratt is up to 62 receptions for 802 yards and 15 TDs despite missing a month of the season with a hamstring injury. He was leading the FBS with 10 TD receptions at the time of the injury in late October and is now again the FBS-leader with those 15 TD catches.
Whichever team lands Sarratt in the draft will seemingly be getting a great bargain and steal.
All he does is produce no matter who he’s playing for, the stakes of the game or the size of the stage.
Overall, including one season in the FCS at St. Francis (Pennsylvania), one season at James Madison and the last two at Indiana, Sarratt has totaled 239 catches for 3,650 yards and 44 TDs (plus 1 rushing TD).
Not bad for a player who had no recruiting ranking — zero stars — coming out of high school in Baltimore in the 2022 recruiting class (per the 247Sports Composite).
