Williams working on drop issues
LOS ANGELES » Every so often, in USC's pre-week media availability before Saturday's game with Arizona, a mix of eager students would poke cameras into scrums with Trojan players and ask a simple question:
Indeed, Arizona weekend marks the annual celebration for families to come visit their kids at USC, and most players seemed to have answers locked and loaded. Except receiver Mario Williams, who reacted to the question on Wednesday as if it was said in a foreign language.
“I don't even know when that is,” he said, before being told it was in fact this week.
“Oh,” he grinned. “I just show up, play football, man!”
It was Williams in a nutshell, natural charisma dripping from a pearly-white smile that seems plastered to his face no matter his emotions, the USC receiver often reserved in conversations with media but saying as much with expressions as he does with words. A “confident human being,” as head coach Lincoln Riley put it last week.
Plenty of reasons to be confident, following Riley from Oklahoma to USC in 2022, a quick-touch readymade slot receiver who had a wealth of continuity with Riley's offense and Caleb Williams' right arm. But after a clean bill his freshman year as a Sooner, Williams dropped six passes last year, noticeable issues with ball control bubbling
over two weekends ago at Arizona State in a game in which multiple passes skidded through his hands.
Every guy in a deep USC receiver room has lofty goals, outside wide receivers coach Dennis Simmons said Wednesday. They put a little bit more pressure on themselves, at times, than they need to. And Williams, Simmons felt, was starting off the year “pressing.”
“I think he was trying too hard,” Simmons said.
When asked if he agreed with Simmons' evaluation, Williams nodded, dropping the smile for a moment as face turned pensive.
“Most definitely,” Williams said, simply.
Williams' issues, though, were met largely with a verbal shrug from Riley and Simmons —
An attitude that explains, simply, why the junior hasn't budged in targets or depthchart status since the start of the year. Or, too, in favor with his quarterback; after one drop against Arizona State, Caleb Williams went over and slapped Williams' hand in encouragement.
“I told him just to make the next one easy,” Caleb Williams said, of a conversation with the receiver during that ASU game. “Don't try and think too much, don't try and do too much. Just be yourself, be a player, be a ballplayer. Football player. Be Mario Williams.”
And on Saturday, against Colorado, the junior receiver hauled in three passes for 53 yards and his first touchdown of the year.
“He's started to calm down and relax and play,” Simmons said, “and do the things that got him here.” FOREMAN MAY REDSHIRT » After two years struggling to crack USC's defensiveline rotation, injury and a seeming lack of consistent effort careening his stock, the cards seemed to hold a breakout for former top recruit Korey Foreman on the Trojans' defensive line in 2023.
“He is improved, and is such a better player right now, than he was 12 months ago,” Riley said in the spring. “It is not even close.”
The showcase hasn't materialized, though, as defensive lineman Foreman's had just a handful of late-game snaps this year. And on Tuesday, Riley said the program was “exploring” having junior Foreman redshirt.
“Occasionally, if a guy maybe is not going to have a huge role in a game, you might hold him back right now and then if an opportunity presents itself to have a bigger role, you can obviously revisit that down the line,” Riley said Tuesday. “And I would put Korey in that category.”