by LAS VEGAS — At the end of a 59-yard run on USC’s ninth offensive play in Saturday’s Pac-12 Championship game — a deflecting, tackle-breaking sprint that should have convinced any last doubters of the deserving winner of the Heisman Trophy – Caleb Williams felt something unmistakably bad in his hamstring.
“Do you already have an old rubber band?” said Williams, with a sardonic smile. “That’s kinda what it sounded like.”
An old rubber band snapping. In the words of USC coach Lincoln Riley, his quarterback “blew his hamstring” on the play. It was the start of a series of cascading calamities that would eventually cost to the Trojans a Pac-12 title and a berth in the college football playoffs. After USC scored on its first three possessions for a 17–3 lead, it all came crashing down in a 47–24 collapse against arch-nemesis Utah that was celebrated wildly by the Ohio State fans everywhere. The Buckeyes appear to have supported the CFP due to this result.
As Williams limped through the rest of the game, he said he tried to follow something Kobe Bryant once said: “The game is bigger than how you feel.” Williams hung on and continued to negotiate. Riley asked him at one point if he was 50% healthy and if substitute Miller Moss should come into the game. “He wasn’t even close to 50%,” Riley said. “He wouldn’t let me take him out. Won’t even let me take it out in the end [after the game was out of hand]. …S—, this is one of the most daring performances you’ve ever seen.
USC QB Caleb Williams was injured early in Saturday’s game but continued to play.
Brian Rothmuller/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
All the guts for Williams, no glory for USC. And no defense. No tackle. No conclusion. Not to bring the runners to the ground. No hope of competing for a unit national championship as the defense sets itself.
USC has come a long way in a hurry under Riley and his talented transfer group, going from 4–8 last year to 11–1 and a No. 4 ranking heading into this game. But, in the end, the Trojans looked like a lot of Riley’s Oklahoma teams, run through and overwhelmed defensively, lacking the physical strength to win national championships. Utah, meanwhile, averaged a staggering 9.4 yards per game.
Riley will have to think long and hard about whether to keep defensive coordinator Alex Grinch, who has also been his DC the past three seasons in Oklahoma. They were a shaky unit all season, and they completely fell apart as this game unfolded against the hard-running Utes. As was exactly the case when Utah upset USC 43–42 in Salt Lake City in October, the Utes have scored on five of their last six possessions. They just kept hammering the Trojans until the Trojans didn’t want to attack anymore.
“We talked about imposing our will,” Utah quarterback Cameron Rising said. “And that’s what we’ve done.”
Both quarterbacks were brilliant on Saturday. Williams threw for 363 yards and three touchdowns, dragging one leg for much of the game. Rising threw for 310 yards and three touchdowns, and showed his own toughness by missing just one play after taking a vicious (but clean) shot in the third quarter that blew his helmet off. But Williams was the one with a message on his fingernails that came back to haunt him in the end. He painted “F— Utah” on his fingers, something Rising said he didn’t notice when asked about it afterwards.
“I don’t care,” Rising said. “He can put whatever he wants in it, that’s how it is. … I hope he liked it.
In the end, USC was penalized for playing in this game. Conference championship games this year only serve as a double jeopardy for regular season champions SEC (Georgia), Big Ten (Michigan), Big 12 (TCU) and USC here in the Pac-12. They were in the top four in the college football playoff standings, while their closest pursuers — No. 5 Ohio State and No. 6 Alabama — had already played their final games last weekend. The top teams could only work their way up the leaderboard and provide an opportunity for someone who didn’t make a title match to come sail.
And now Ohio State is apparently the beneficiary of USC’s loss. “Coach [Ryan] Day, you’re welcome,” Utah coach Kyle Whittingham told the Buckeyes chief during the national television postgame interview. After being beaten by Michigan at home by 22 points in its last game, Ohio State sneaks into the Playoffs through the back door.
Still, it’s impossible to feel too sorry for USC after they were absolutely hauled like that by Utah to a three-game losing streak. It would have been unfair for the Trojans to lose by a touchdown as Williams limped off for three quarters. When you give up 47 in a game, you know you have to win – that’s a you problem, not a system problem. All the talk of the playoffs swirling around USC, and the fact that the Trojans were favored despite the loss in Salt Lake City, was exactly the kind of motivational fodder that Whittingham always craved in a program that pulled himself up by his boots.
For the second consecutive season, Utah will play in the Rose Bowl as Pac-12 champions.
Steve Marcus/AP
“We had a team meeting and voted on whether we should even show up for kickoff because they were already going to the playoffs,” Whittingham said. “We had a little chip on our shoulder.”
For the second year in a row, the Utes dominate the Pac-12 and will play in the Rose Bowl. They’re a popular champion in the league, having taken down a school that’s supposed to drop the Pac-12 for the Big Ten in 2024.
And despite all the progress USC has made under Riley, it’s clear how much more needs to be done. His three playoff teams in Oklahoma have lost semifinals in which they gave up 63 points against LSU in 2019, 45 against Alabama in 18 and 54 (in overtime) against Georgia in 17. Riley is the quarterback developer -preeminent fullback in the sport and an attacking savant, but it takes more than pretty ball games and points to win at the very end of the season.
Stopping other guys counts too.
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