Musings from Arledge: Caleb Williams, that USC offense, and defense that's good enough
Here’s the list of teams I believe should be favored over USC on a neutral field: .
No, I’m not going crazy. Obviously, USC hasn’t been tested yet. And you prove your greatness by how you play against the best opponents, not three bottom dwellers. USC has some major challenges coming up, and it’s entirely possible the Trojans could lose twice and be left out of the playoff. It could happen. The best team doesn’t always win.
But here’s one thing we know: USC has the best offense in the country, and I’m not sure it’s close.
The most important position in modern football is quarterback, and USC has the best college quarterback I’ve ever seen. He can run around you. He can run over you. He can launch pinpoint passes 70 yards in the air. He can get rid of the ball on time. He can run circles around the defense like he’s playing on the playground at recess and then throw a dart in into the end zone. He can do everything.
Caleb Williams is better than Tim Tebow. He’s better than Cam Newton. He’s better than Carson Palmer. He’s better than Vince Young and Charlie Ward and Tommie Frazier and Michael Vick. All of those guys were great. Caleb Williams is a better all-around player than any of them.
You can tell that the game has really slowed down for him. He’s never in a rush. Even when he does something he shouldn’t do—like throw a deep ball to a covered guy on third down early in the game—it’s not because he lost his composure or didn’t know what to do. He knew he shouldn’t have done it, and he did it anyway. And then looked over at Lincoln Riley and gave a little shrug and a look on his face that said, “I know.”
Every defense in the country has a huge matchup problem against this USC offense. Caleb Williams is amazing. USC is loaded at wide receiver. What team in the country would have Duce Robinson playing mostly in garbage time? Do you have any idea how talented that kid is? He’s 6’6” with long arms and is one of the fastest players on the field every week. What offense could afford to target Zachariah Branch only a few times a game? Branch is an eye-popping talent who is a threat to score from anywhere at any time. Both of those guys will be top-10 picks in three years. But USC has so much depth at wide receiver, they can afford to spread the ball around.
Marshawn Lloyd is so explosive and gives USC an added dimension at running back. The line hasn’t been tested by a great defensive line yet, but I feel pretty good about that group. And the offense is led by Lincoln Riley, the best offensive coach in the country. Nobody is better at getting great athletes in space. And with an experienced, uber-skilled quarterback that he knows very well, Riley can use the entire playbook. Against this USC offense, you must defend the entire field, horizontally and vertically. You have to deal with constant misdirection. And you have to face the fact that even if you do everything right—even if you call the right defense and even if your guys are right where they are supposed to be—Caleb Williams or Marshawn Lloyd or Tahj Washington or Zachariah Branch or any number of other talented guys might just make the play anyway.
Throughout the offseason, most USC fans were saying that the Trojans are a playoff team if only the defense can be solid. With this offense, the defense doesn’t have to be great. For Michigan or Georgia to be playoff teams, the defenses have to be great. The offenses are good but not overwhelming. For USC, the defense just has to be good. It just has to able to hold its own, to make some plays and not get pushed around the field all night long.
I think the defense is good enough to do that. That group has some massive challenges coming up. There will be a night or two when they get shredded. In modern college football, even the great defenses have those nights, and this is not a great defense. But I think it might be a good one. Bear Alexander is becoming the guy we all hoped he would be. Kyon Barrs is also solid in the middle. Jamil Muhammad is an athlete and much better than I expected him to be. Solomon Byrd may be the most improved player on the team. Calen Bullock is a stud and is playing like an All-American. Last night, Max Williams and Bryson Shaw were fantastic. I think by midseason, Mason Cobb, Raesjon Davis, Tackett Curtis, and Eric Gentry could make for a very solid linebacker rotation.
No, these guys aren’t going to shut down good teams. This defense’s inability to go even a single game without giving up at least one explosive rushing play is frustrating. Alex Grinch’s aggressive style of defense will lead to big plays occasionally, and his insistence on putting his secondary in a tough spot will lead to big pass plays. USC’s defense is going to give up points, and some weeks they’ll give up a lot. We all know this.
But let’s not move the goalposts. We said USC needed to be good on defense. They needed to be able to compete with good offenses. To get some stops. To force some turnovers. To pose something of a challenge. Because if USC can simply compete with the better offenses on the schedule, the task of outscoring Caleb Williams and this USC offense will be an extraordinary challenge for anybody in the country.
And I think USC’s defense can do that. Washington, Notre Dame, and Oregon are going to score against USC. So will Colorado. So will UCLA and Arizona, probably. But the gap between USC’s defense and the offenses for those teams is smaller than the enormous gap between those teams’ defenses and this USC offense. Caleb Williams is going to humiliate each of those defenses. He just will. He’s too good. And Lincoln Riley is too good. And Caleb’s supporting cast is too good.
I know I left out Utah. Because unless Cam Rising comes back at 100% before October 21, Utah has no chance of beating USC in the Coliseum. Their offense right now is awful, and we already know that a healthy Caleb Williams will do whatever he wants to that defense.
Come on back, Cam. Don’t be afraid. I want you to take your beating.
There will probably be a letdown somewhere along the way. But I’m a believer. One loss gets USC in the playoff, and right now, I think USC can run this schedule with only one loss. This is a really good football team.
The stubbornness of football coaches never ceases to amaze me. We probably all remember a few years ago when a Clay Helton-led USC team was playing a good Utah team at the Coliseum behind a third-string quarterback. The only chance USC had of winning that game was if they could find a way to have their three receivers—all with the talent to be quality NFL starters—control the game. So Kyle Whittingham decided to man up all game and let USC’s stud receivers shred Utah’s secondary all night. It was a dumb decision by a very good coach. He was stubborn and paid the price.
But he’s not alone. Football coaches love to talk about how it’s not about the other team; it’s all about their guys. If they do what they’ve been taught, they will be successful. You know the speech. You’ve heard it a hundred times. That’s how we know that there will be other coaches who will follow Troy Edwards’ example and be stupid enough to kick the ball to Zachariah Branch. There will be. There shouldn’t, but there will. Some coaches just can’t help themselves.
It’s crazy to think that USC has Caleb Williams, a superhero at quarterback who does the impossible virtually every Saturday, and yet USC has a true freshman who is making a case for being the most exciting player on the roster. Everybody has a different comparison for the kid: Reggie Bush, Devin Hester, De’Anthony Thomas, DeSean Jackson, Tyreek Hill, Gale Sayers. I prefer Rocket Ismael. But no matter what comparison you use, this kid is just different. Players like this don’t come around very often. And were it not for Caleb Williams being magic, there wouldn’t be a more suspenseful two seconds in college football than the two seconds right before Zachariah Branch catches a punt.
Nick Saban is great, and Alabama still has a ton of talent on that roster. But Alabama is in trouble. When they pulled in Tyler Buchner from Notre Dame through the transfer portal, that gave me pause. I know that kid isn’t a championship-level quarterback. And now we know the truth: Bama simply doesn’t have a quarterback on the roster. Jalen Milroe might become one. But right now, he’s not. And this isn’t college football from 20 or 30 years ago. You can’t have an ordinary guy at quarterback and win a national title. As Nick Saban admitted a couple of years ago, good defenses don’t beat good offenses anymore. You have to be able to score. I’m not convinced this Alabama offense can score. Saban may pull a rabbit out of the hat. He’s arguably the best of all time for a reason. But he’ll need to work some magic to avoid a 9-3 season and a second-tier bowl this year.
Do I owe Steve Sarkisian an apology? No, not yet. That was a great win, and he’s clearly done a good job building that roster. Because the Big 12 is a hot mess this year—Baylor is bad, TCU is bad, OU still isn’t OU—Sark should make the playoff this year. But I do not trust him, and nobody else should either. His track record of putting soft, undisciplined teams on the field does not go away just because he got one great win.
Can somebody get Dean Blandino on my YouTube show for an interview? I wish I could remember the details of the play. But my recollection is that USC was returning a punt, there was a penalty well beyond the spot where the ball carrier was eventually tackled, and for some reason the officials marked off the penalty from where the receiver caught the ball, which was nowhere near where the penalty had taken place. Does anybody else remember this? What the hell was that? Did Washington State and Oregon State use their exclusive voting rights to vote for that application of the rule out of spite? I’m still befuddled.
By the way, for those who are wondering whether Oregon State and Washington State can legitimately vote themselves all kinds of special favors because everybody else has announced they are leaving and has therefore been disenfranchised, I don’t know. I haven’t seen the agreement.
But I’m rooting for them. I think it’s a bummer for those programs that they have been relegated to the minor leagues. More importantly, I hate the conference championship game. USC is going to play all of the other good teams in the conference, it has five brutal games in a six-game span, and I don’t want them to have a rematch against somebody in a stupid game in Vegas. I want Wazzu and Oregon State to vote themselves into the conference title game. USC can rest that week and move onto the playoff, and those teams can have a make-believe title bout. It’s good for everybody.
Non-USC game I’m most looking forward to over the next couple of weeks: Colorado at Oregon. Yeah, I know, Notre Dame and Ohio State is more important, and I’m very curious to see how that one goes. But this Primetime hype train is gaining speed, and while I suspect the Buffs have some rough matchups ahead of them, they also clearly have some elite players on that roster and are playing with a ton of confidence. Do I think they’ll beat Oregon in Autzen? No. But I think they can, and I would have three hours of immeasurable joy watching that happen.
Caleb’s going to whoop you, Buffs, make no mistake about that. But good luck the next few weeks. You guys are making college football a little more interesting, and embarrassing the Ducks at their place would be a treat for the entire civilized world.
Bryson Shaw was smacking dudes last night. I’m starting to see why Grinch wanted that guy.
Isn’t it great that USC football is fun again? Whatever happens the rest of the year, the team is fun and exciting in a way they haven’t been in years. I couldn’t be more grateful to Mike Bohn, Brandon Sosna, Carol Folt, Rick Caruso and everybody else who had a role in deciding that USC should stop screwing around, stop acting like UCLA football, and should go get the best young coach in America so the Trojans could play like Trojans again.
Thank you.
