Steve Spurrier shares thoughts on how Caleb Williams should handle future
What does Caleb Williams have to gain by playing the rest of the 2023 college football season?
USC is all but out of the College Football Playoff race, the Pac-12 Championship game is a long shot, the Trojans are hanging onto their spot in the top 25 rankings and Williams is the unquestioned No. 1 overall pick whether he throws another pas this season or not.
Everyone has chimed in on the matter of Williams possibly hanging it up for the rest of the year, and now so has college football coaching legend Steve Spurrier. The old ball coach threw his two cents in on the matter, giving some old-school advice to Williams from one Heisman Trophy winner to another.
“I don’t know what he should do and you can’t really tell players that sit out the bowl game that you should play,” Spurrier said during an appearance on the Paul Finebaum Show on Wednesday. “But I can tell you what we used to tell our players. I said, ‘We want to have a good season, we want to try to win the division, win the SEC and if we’re in the hunt, we can probably win the national championship. We’re gonna try to win the bowl game and we’re gonna try to finish in the top 10 in the nation.’
“If we do that, we can have memories of a lifetime. Top 10 team, that’s pretty damn good. Let’s prepare and keep going and keep going. But nowadays, that’s not part of the game plan for teams. All these guys sit out the bowl game, don’t want to get hurt, hurt their draft status and all that.”
Well, it was the game plan for Williams, Lincoln Riley and friends out in Los Angeles. It just fell apart in two weeks and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. Playing in a bowl game with low stakes is a recipe for disaster when it comes to trying to stay healthy for the draft.
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Sure, the odds of getting injured are the same in any game, but if any of us were in Williams’ position — we’d at least give it a thought.
“I can’t tell you what he should do,” Spurrier continued. “I hope he stays and tells his team, ‘Hey, let’s have a winning season, let’s beat some people.’ If they can’t win the conference, try to win the bowl game, try to finish in the top 10, top 25, be ranked, or something.”
If one goal fails, set another one. Williams hasn’t hit a low point like this during his collegiate career, but taking Spurrier’s advice could go a long way in securing a lasting legacy for Williams at USC whether he was able to bring them a national championship or not.