In reality, the question that should be asked here is: why aren’t we just giving this award to Howard?
We could argue his entire body of work, as the leading tackler in TCU history with 343 takedowns, or that this was his third consecutive season to lead the team in tackles (a TCU first) and that he recorded over 100 tackles in each of those seasons.
But to go beyond this past year would be unfair, so we’ll focus on his 2017, where Howard was awarded the Alamo Bowl Defensive MVP (for the second time in three years), led the team with 108 tackles, and was drafted by the St.