Williams might have to be superhuman to lift defense
BOULDER, COLORADO »
With time waning in the third quarter against a suddenly-charged Colorado team, USC quarterback Caleb Williams evaded pressure, rolled right, and made his first major mistake of the year.
Through five games, there'd been little indication the man was human. He'd fumbled a couple snaps, sure, but hadn't lost any. He'd airmailed a couple throws, sure, but hadn't thrown any picks. He'd run circles around hapless defensive lines, making throws that seemed impossibly casual whether short bunnies or cross-body-on-the-run bombs, causing the world to frequently run out of tangible descriptors for his greatness other than Caleb being Caleb.
But as the Buffs started nipping at USC's heels Saturday, Williams forced one. Mario Williams was sitting downfield, but so too were two Colorado defensive backs, and instead of setting his feet Williams flung an on-the-move deep ball directly into the waiting arms of Buffs DB Cam'Ron Silmon-Craig.
“I didn't get my legs under it, should've got my legs under it, I had enough time to do so,” Williams said postgame. “Threw my first interception. We won the game. Awesome.”
He leaned back in his chair at the podium, looking off into the distance as if to say and that's that,
Lincoln Riley's lips forming into a slight smile.
They did, in fact, win the game, 48-41, because Williams threw six touchdown passes to tie his single-game collegiate career high. His stats in a chase for another Heisman, through five games,
Caleb Williams
Saturday: Arizona at USC, 7:30 p.m., ESPN
are something you couldn't even recreate in Career Mode in Madden: he's vying for the highest singleseason passer efficiency rating in college football history and has 21 touchdowns passes in just 141 attempts.
But that one mistake, giving the ball back to a rollicking Buffs offense with a three-touchdown lead and watching Colorado mount a comeback that nearly toppled USC, illustrated an incredibly sobering Trojan reality: There's no room for error here.
Williams has to be superhuman, at this defense's current level, for the Trojans to have any shot at reaching a College Football Playoff.
“We're always in it with Caleb,” safety Bryson Shaw said postgame, “but we want it to be on us. We want, the defense, we want to make the plays.”
They haven't consistently, against teams with any sort of offensive dynamism. USC gave up 28 points to San Jose State in the season opener; 28 to Arizona State, as Kenny Dillingham threw out a bag of tricks; and 41 to Colorado, 27 in the second half.
From that pick forward, increased pressure from the Buffs' defensive line slowed USC's offensive flow, Williams throwing for just 29 of his 403 yards in the fourth quarter. And, the offense unable to stay on the field for long, Colorado decimated the Trojans' secondary to pull within a touchdown before poor clock management allowed USC to wrap up a win.
In summation: USC won a game, in which Williams threw for six scores, by a single touchdown. And Riley, postgame, insisted the issues facing the Trojans' defense “didn't look like last year.” But oh, how Saturday looked like a game from 2022 — Williams masking obvious defensive issues in wins over Arizona, Cal and UCLA with a virtuoso performance.
And we all know how that story ended: when Williams faltered everso-slightly due to injury against Utah, USC cratered. For all his constant appearances in TV commercials, for all the trending Twitter highlights of Williams' latest holy-expletive highlight — it's already becoming easy for the collegiate-football society to reach a Shohei Ohtani and LeBron Jameslevel of apathetic acceptance of Williams' feats. At some level, even through five games against largely inferior opponents, it becomes impossible to overstate what USC's quarterback is doing on football fields.
“It won't be until he leaves,” wide receiver Brenden Rice said postgame Saturday, “that people will really realize the greatness they're watching and what they really get to come out here and see every single day.”
That goes for USC, too — who'd better hope they can fully take advantage of their quarterback's greatness before it's too late.