The Associated Press national player of the week in football for Week 1 of the season:<\/p>\n
Malachi Toney, Miami<\/p>\n
Toney formed an immediate connection with Duke transfer quarterback Darian Mensah, catching 12 passes for 234 yards and three touchdowns in the Hurricanes\u2019 45-6 win at Stanford.<\/a> Toney set a Miami single-game receiving record, bettering the 220 yards by Eddie Brown against Boston College in 1984.<\/p>\n Toney and Mensah teamed for 48 yards on Miami\u2019s first play from scrimmage and they finished the drive with a 23-yard touchdown. Toney caught a 2-yard TD pass on the second series, hauled in a 39-yard pass to set up another TD and finished his night with a 47-yard TD reception.<\/p>\n Runner-up<\/p>\n Mason Heintschel, Pittsburgh. The second-year quarterback threw seven touchdown passes in a 59-14 win over Miami (Ohio)<\/a> to set the Atlantic Coast Conference record and tie the school record.<\/p>\n Heintschel completed 31 of 41 passes for 453 yards. His seven touchdowns went to seven different receivers, with three coming in the first half and four in the second.<\/p>\n Honorable mention<\/p>\n Mississippi\u2019s Deuce Alexander<\/a> had a career-best 159 yards on five catches with a pair of 62-yard touchdowns against Louisville; Miami\u2019s Mensah completed 27 of 30 passes for a career-high 401 yards with five touchdowns against Stanford. He has thrown at least one touchdown pass in 19 straight games, the longest active streak in the FBS; SMU\u2019s Kevin Jennings completed 26 of 36 passes for 430 yards and three touchdowns, with two interceptions, against Florida State<\/a>; Arizona State\u2019s Cutter Boley<\/a> completed 21 of 27 passes for 387 yards and six touchdowns against Morgan State; Ohio State\u2019s Jeremiah Smith<\/a> had eight catches for 151 yards and two touchdowns against Ball State.; LSU\u2019s Sam Leavitt<\/a> had 230 yards passing and 113 yards rushing against Clemson, tallying three total touchdowns (two rushing, one passing); Auburn safety Eric Winters made a game-saving tackle<\/a> on a two-point conversion attempt in the final 10 seconds, stopping Baylor tight end Matthew Klopfenstein inside the 1-yard line. Winters also was credited with a forced fumble and career highs of 11 tackles and 2.0 for loss; San Jose State linebacker Dylan Lee recorded a career-high nine tackles, an interception, two pass breakups and a tackle for loss against Eastern Michigan<\/a>.<\/p>\n Six stats<\/p>\n \u2014 Kamari Moulton\u2019s rushing average of 16.64 yards per carry on 11 attempts in Iowa\u2019s win over Northern Illinois<\/a> was the highest for a player with at least that many carries since 2024. Eight of his runs went for 20-plus yards.<\/p>\n \u2014 Missouri State lost three fumbles in its season-opening loss at Texas A&M.<\/a> The Bears lost a total of five over 13 games last season.<\/p>\n \u2014 Boise State allowed three pass plays of 50-plus yards in its loss to Oregon.<\/a> The Broncos allowed four over 14 games last season.<\/p>\n \u2014 Vanderbilt has won eight home games in a row for the first time since a nine-game stretch that spanned 1954-56.<\/p>\n \u2014 Penn State\u2019s Rocco Becht is the FBS active leader in quarterback starts (40) and wins (27).<\/p>\n \u2014 Louisiana Tech\u2019s 63 first-half points against Northwestern State were the most by an FBS team at halftime since Tennessee hung 65 on Kent State in 2024. Tech won 80-6<\/a>, its most points in a game since it joined Division I in 1989.<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n AP voters: Aaron Beard, Pat Graham, Stephen Hawkins, John Marshall, Michael Marot, Steve Megargee, Eric Olson.<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n Sign up for Top 25 poll alerts here<\/a>. Visit the Top 25 here<\/a> and see AP\u2019s full college football coverage here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Associated Press national player of the week in football for Week 1 of the season: Malachi Toney,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":393722,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[123,125,124],"class_list":["post-393721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=393721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393721\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/393722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=393721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=393721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=393721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}