Caleb Williams evaluates his feelings on this USC team after season opener

USC was far from flawless in their Week 0 season-opener vs. San Jose State, but star QB Caleb Williams is just happy to be 1-0, though he does see plenty of room for improvement.

In the postgame presser, several players joined head coach Lincoln Riley at the podium to discuss the victory, including Williams. Now a veteran of the USC locker room, the question eventually came to him: as the leader of the team, how did he think the Trojans performed in the 56-28 victory.

“I feel good. I mean, we’re 1-0,” was Williams’ quick answer. However, he then explained the agitation of leaving the field without putting on quite as great a performance as the team had hoped.

“Coach said this and, you know, walking off the field, there’s a bit of frustration that, you know, whether coaches or myself or the players that have been here, and seen and know how it should go and been playing football for a while in college and you’ve been in a lot of games, been a lot of reps. And, you know, in the first half, it just felt like we weren’t hitting on certain calibers and things like that that we’re gonna hit on here soon.”

After he was pulled out of the game once USC was up huge, he took some time to roam the sidelines as a captain, reminding the other leaders that there is still much progress to be made if USC is to reach their ultimate goals.

“And you know, I spoke to a bunch of leaders in-game, you know, right after coach took me out and the message was: We got a special team. But the the second part of the message was: We got a long, long way to go and a lot to get better at.”

At the end of the day, though, a 1-0 record thanks to a 28-point win is always worth celebrating.

“But the good part is: we’re 1-0 and I feel good going into this next week. You know, like coach said: this is a great team, good team, that prepared well and, you know, they went out there and executed. So did we, and we came out with the winner.”

USC gets Nevada at home next week in what should be another blowout, before Stanford comes to town to kick-off conference play the next week. After that, the Trojans meet their first of two bye weeks this year thanks to the Week 0 contest.