Donte Williams believes Jacob Lichtenstein has come a long way

USC Trojans interim head coach Donte Williams is fighting to remove the interim tag and be the team’s official head coach. Since taking over for Clay Hilton, after he was fired following an embarrassing Week 2 loss at home against Stanford, Williams has gone 2-1. This week, he looks for his third win and the team’s fourth of the season as they are set to face off against the Utah Utes.

During the Trojans live interview on Tuesday Williams was asked about the big performance by his junior defensive tackle Jacob Lichtenstein.

“I think it’s big because Jake last week he battled through some injuries. So, for him to be able to, he came along way first off,” said Willaims. “That’s a guy maybe a year ago dealt with a little bit of injury doesn’t know how to still go hard, doesn’t know if he should play. But credit to him, credit to coach Vic, he worked through those things this week and it paid off for him.

“You go into the game and you make big-time plays. You know it always pays off to play hurt. I don’t care what nobody says if you’re hurt and you make good plays you don’t feel that pain anymore.”

The USC Trojan interior lineman had himself a nice game against the Colorado Buffaloes. He finished the game with 3 tackles all of which were solo; two of them were for a loss. And he also finished the game with two of the team’s five sacks. Led by his strong interior play, USC limited Colorado to just 242 yards of total offense.

Lichtenstein’s long battle

Lichtenstein has been with the Trojans for five years. He enrolled on the campus in 2017 and redshirted his first season. The following year, he played in 11 games for USC and started in two. He had 15 tackles on the season and a pass deflection. In 2019, he sat out the entire season while recovering from a knee surgery he had to end last season. In 2020, he elected to opt-out of the first four games for the Trojans but returned for the final two games of the 2020 season and did not play in either of them.

So far this year, Lichtenstein has played in all five of the Trojans games. The six-foot-six junior out of Florida currently has 13 total tackles on the season six of which are solo and the two sacks — the two he recorded against Colorado.

Lichtenstein had a long journey to get to this point in his career. He has fought through multiple injuries and still put up nice numbers against Colorado. If he can keep on fighting he could hear his name called in either this year or next year’s NFL Draft.