No flinching allowed: Caleb Williams, USC hold off UCLA in a thriller

PASADENA, Calif. – History tells us that shortcuts exist to win the Heisman Trophy. From the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s, all you had to do was be the best player at Notre Dame. From the mid-’60s into the 1980s, you just needed to play tailback for USC. These days, the shortest path to win the most recognizable individual award in American sports is to play quarterback for Lincoln Riley.

That worked for Baker Mayfield and Kyler Murray in consecutive seasons at “the other place,” as the coach of No. 7 USC now refers to Oklahoma. And after the recital performed Saturday night at the Rose Bowl by Trojans quarterback Caleb Williams against No. 16 UCLA, it just may work again.

Williams finished with 503 yards of total offense, a rivalry record, threw for two touchdowns and rushed for a third as the Trojans held on to beat the Bruins 48-45. The victory clinched a berth in the Pac-12 Championship Game for USC (10-1 overall, 8-1 in the Pac-12). More important: On the same Saturday that the top four teams struggled to win and the same Saturday night that another former Riley protégé, Spencer Rattler, threw for 438 yards and six touchdowns in South Carolina’s stunning 63-38 upset of No. 5 Tennessee, the Trojans placed themselves in the center of the College Football Playoff debate.

USC has games remaining against No. 18 Notre Dame and a ranked opponent in the Pac-12 Championship Game. The Trojans’ offense is operating at a high level of efficiency. The Trojans gained 649 yards of total offense against the Bruins. In 81 snaps, they had only five plays that lost yardage; two of those came when Williams took a knee to run out the clock.

“He’s been one of the best players in the country this year. He’s played really well,” Riley said of his quarterback even as he dismissed the Heisman talk. Individual awards, Riley said, “are kind of by-products. That’s not why we’re here.”

Of course not, but Williams’ performance against a ranked archrival, on top of everything else he has done this season, makes the award talk impossible to avoid. He was 32-of-43 for 470 yards and two touchdowns. He also rushed for 33 yards and a score on eight carries.

“I played in two other games that are large rivalries,” said Williams, referring to the Red River Rivalry and Bedlam. “I kind of went into this game expecting the same thing: ‘It’s going to be a dogfight. Do your job. Do your job at a high level and keep fighting. Keep swinging.’ ”

USC beat the Bruins for the 17^th time in 23 seasons but not without making it difficult. USC came into the game having scored on 29 of its past 30 red zone trips. They “failed” on their last possession against Cal when, having reached the Bears’ 19, they took a knee twice to end the game.

Against the Bruins, the Trojans took their first two possessions into the red zone and came away with no points. On the first possession, UCLA stuffed Williams on a fourth-and-1. On the second, USC kicker Denis Lynch missed a 32-yard field goal. Lynch this season is 7-of-7 from 40-49 yards, including two against UCLA. But he is 3-of-8 from 30-39 yards. Any golfer could diagnose this malady; Lynch has the yips.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, during the commercial that followed, a UCLA fan came onto the field and made a 25-yard field goal in an Allstate promotion that earned him $1,000 and two Bruins men’s basketball tickets.

Given the opening, UCLA moved steadily to a 14-0 lead, the first time all season that USC has trailed anyone by two scores. The Bruins scored the second touchdown by converting an interception thrown by Williams, only the third he had thrown this season on his 353^rd attempt.

It was last season that Riley replaced Rattler during the Oklahoma-Texas game with Williams, an untested freshman who rallied the Sooners from a 28-7 deficit to win 55-48. Riley mentioned that game when he met with his players Friday night.

“The problem becomes when you try to decide what’s going to happen before it happens,” Riley said. “You get so excited to play you kind of dream, ‘Oh, we’re going to go play this unbelievable game, and get off to this lead.’ You never sit there and think, ‘Oh, well, we’re going to be down 14-0.’

“I actually told the guys last night, I was referencing a game we were in last year at the other place. … I told the guys, ‘We are capable of being down 28-7 in the first quarter. We can make a lot of great plays. We can make some mistakes, too. The team we’re playing is a good team. You can’t write the script first. You have to be ready to respond and respond with discipline.’ ”

From that point, Williams and the Trojans rarely faltered, even in their first full game without starting running back Travis Dye.

On a day when North Carolina wunderkind quarterback Drake Maye got outplayed by Georgia Tech third-stringer Zach Gibson, why wouldn’t USC’s Austin Jones, in his first start, outrush UCLA star Zach Charbonnet? Jones, who portaled here from Stanford, rushed for 120 yards and two touchdowns, and added 57 yards on four catches. Charbonnet, who came into the game averaging 143.1 yards per game, finished with 95 yards.

The past three Victory Bell games were decided by scores of 52-35, 43-38 and 62-33, and they were played with Riley in Oklahoma, so no one expected a defensive throwdown. But this game became  a defensive throw-up: The offenses combined for 93 points and 1,155 yards. When USC and UCLA, respectively, threw touchdown passes on the first two plays of the fourth quarter, it became clear that the last team to make a mistake would lose.

That mistake would be made by Bruins quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson, a fifth-year senior making his 46^th start. Thompson-Robinson did it all Saturday night: He threw for 309 yards and four touchdowns and rushed for two. He became the school’s career leader in total touchdowns (110) and total offense (11,959 yards). But doing it all included three interceptions and a fumble, all in UCLA territory, that the Trojans converted into 10 points.

Leading 48-45, USC did give the Bruins one last chance to win. On third-and-10 at UCLA’s 34, Bruins edge rusher Laiatu Latu sacked Williams for an 11-yard loss, forcing USC to punt for the first time in the game. UCLA took over at its 11 with 2:21 to play and two timeouts. They got near midfield when Thompson-Robinson never eyeballed defensive end Korey Foreman, who had dropped into coverage and caught a pass intended for Kazmeir Allen.

USC responded to going 4-8 last season by stealing Riley from Oklahoma. In this age of the portal and grad transfers, Riley brought in 33 new players. They have come a long way. Asked to provide evidence of the transformation, Riley said, “Being down 14-0 and not even flinching, not even thinking about flinching.”

They have better things to not even think about now, things like the College Football Playoff and the Heisman. Going into the last week of the regular season, USC remains alive and very well.