The Heisman Trophy isn’t typically won by preseason favorites. The nature of college football is that star players can emerge from relative anonymity, which makes predicting who will be the biggest before the season has even started a difficult endeavor. Still, the preseason odds give us an idea of who is expected to be in contention.Notre Dame’s CJ Carr enters this season as the betting favorite with +700 odds on FanDuel and DraftKings. The Fighting Irish quarterback had an impressive season as a redshirt freshman with 24 touchdowns and six interceptions while completing roughly two-thirds of his passes.Carr has a year of starting experience under his belt and Notre Dame is ranked highly in the preseason polls. Plus, the Fighting Irish have what appears to be a soft schedule to start the season (the first six opponents had losing records last season). It’s easy to see why Carr is a logical contender.Who will win the Heisman Trophy this year?Ralph D. Russo, Sam Khan Jr. and moreTexas quarterback Arch Manning has the second-best odds at +750 on DraftKings and +850 on FanDuel. Manning wasn’t the star of last college football season in terms of his play, but he was the name that garnered the most attention in the early part of the season. With his famous quarterbacking last name and a five-star rating as a recruit, Manning entered 2025 with sky-high expectations. Then he had an ugly season opener against an elite Ohio State defense as part of an up and down season.Can Manning be better this year? He has more experience and two stud wide receivers in Ryan Wingo and Cam Coleman, who transferred from Auburn this offseason. The rest of the argument for Manning as a Heisman contender is similar to the one for Carr: Manning is a second-year starter on a highly-rated team and plays quarterback. The logic doesn’t go that deep in preseason Heisman odds.The next few players in the odds are similar: Miami’s Darian Mensah, Oregon’s Dante Moore, Ohio State’s Julian Sayin (a Heisman finalist last season) and Ole Miss’ Trinidad Chambliss. All four are quarterbacks with at least one year starting experience and are on teams ranked in the top 10 of the preseason polls.