Through two games, against tougher competition, Washington’s Jake Locker has thrown for more yards than Florida’s Tim Tebow and owns a better touchdowns-to-interceptions ratio than Texas’ Colt McCoy.

Tebow remains the early favorite to win his second Heisman Trophy in three seasons. If Tebow were to suffer an injury that sidelines him for more than a week, or in the unlikely event he succumbs to a senior-year slump, the award almost certainly will go to McCoy, last season’s second-place finisher.

Locker? Despite passing for 574 yards and five touchdowns and rushing for 69 yards and another touchdown, he has never been mentioned in any discussion about the 2009 Heisman Trophy.

Until now.

I know, the Huskies have more urgent items on their rebuilding agenda than promoting their redshirt-junior quarterback as a Heisman candidate. I know, the odds of Locker garnering enough support to qualify as a finalist are longer than my chances of appearing on the cover of “Gentleman’s Quarterly.”

And, yes, I know the crazy notion of a team that’s won one game in 22 months becoming associated with a Heisman Trophy candidate would find Locker himself echoing the famous words of John McEnroe: You can’t be serious!

I’m serious. I’m as serious as a beets-on-lettuce lunch with six swigs of bottled water.

Locker was named in August to the watch list for the Maxwell Award — it’s a slightly younger version of the Heisman, only without the hype and the bronze stiff-arm on the trophy — and all he’s done since then is throw for a career-high 321 yards against No. 11 LSU and account for four touchdowns in the Huskies’ victory over Idaho.

It’s not a stretch to presume that Locker belongs among, say, the 15 players on the Heisman Trophy radar screen. Yet ESPN’s 15-player Heisman watch list, updated weekly, ignores him for the likes of Central Michigan’s Dan LeFevour, Cincinnati’s Tony Pike and Michigan freshman Tate Forcier. According to ESPN’s national panel, 10 of the 15 players most likely to win the Heisman Trophy are quarterbacks.

And Locker isn’t one of them.

That could change if the Huskies give USC any kind of scare during Saturday’s nationally televised game in Seattle. The downside of a schedule that includes LSU and USC at home and Notre Dame on the road is the difficulty in sustaining momentum early in the season. The upside is that Locker’s playmaking talent will be exposed to a coast-to-coast audience.

Because he was forced to sit out the last eight games of 2008 with a broken thumb, many Heisman voters think of Locker only as the poor, unfortunate soul penalized last season for tossing a football over his shoulder after a potential game-tying touchdown against BYU. Mix a recent 15-game losing streak into the equation, and it’s little wonder Locker has no traction in the Heisman Trophy race.

But he’s got traction with some of the experts who are familiar with him.

“I think Jake is one of the best players I’ve ever seen in this conference, in all the years we’ve been here,” USC coach Pete Carroll said the other day during a conference call with reporters. “He’s the most extraordinary athlete at the position we’ve seen, and I saw that as a freshman.”

Sure, Carroll was inclined to blow some smoke. The Trojans escaped Ohio State last week with a thrilling victory that leaves them vulnerable to an emotional letdown at Husky Stadium. If you must exaggerate the ability of the opposition to get the attention of your team, then you exaggerate.

But here’s a thought: Maybe Carroll means what he says.

Maybe his concern is genuine about how the Trojans’ defense will confront a 6-foot-3, 226-pound multi-dimensional threat who, while faster than most defensive backs, has made a seamless transition from a running-as-a-first-resort quarterback into a pocket passer in Steve Sarkisian’s pro-style offense. Maybe Carroll had studied some films and was as awed by Locker’s signature play against Idaho as anybody who saw it in person.

The 35-yard completion, off a third-and-14 scramble, provided the kind of highlight clip essential for a Heisman Trophy campaign. Unable to follow 60 games a week, voters rely on statistics (too much so, but that’s another story) while waiting for something more tangible than numbers to wow them. Locker’s 35-yard, scrambling pass was a wow play.

He’ll need more of those to achieve relevance among voters, and — granted, this is a bit problematic — he’ll need to lead the Huskies to at least seven victories. Notre Dame quarterback Paul Hornung, in 1956, was the first player on a losing team to win the Heisman Trophy. There won’t be a second.

Still, when a coach as accomplished as Carroll identifies Locker to be among the best Pac-10 players he’s seen since he took over at USC in 2001, that’s an endorsement worthy of our attention. He’s coached Carson Palmer, Matt Leinart and Reggie Bush: three Heisman winners on his own team.

Not to put words in Carroll’s mouth, but I think he thinks Locker could be a Heisman Trophy candidate. So that makes, let’s see, two of us.

A Heisman bandwagon it ain’t. But if Locker gives the Huskies a chance to shock the college football world on Saturday, a Heisman bandwagon it will be.