Lamar Jackson set the college football world on fire during his time at Louisville, dazzling his way to the Heisman Trophy in 2016 and putting up similar numbers the following year in 2017. Despite this, Bobby Petrino’s Cardinals only won a combined 17 games through those two seasons and it is considered one of the all-time squanderings of a generational quarterback in recent memory.
We’re seeing that play out at Southern California with Caleb Williams as we speak.
USC narrowly avoided an embarrassing upset loss against struggling Cal on Saturday, escaping Berkeley by the skin of its teeth with a 50-49 victory. The Trojans had to rally back from a two-touchdown deficit early in the fourth quarter to pull ahead and needed a two-point conversion stop in the final minute to put the Golden Bears down.
Despite forcing four turnovers throughout the afternoon, this may have been the worst performance of Alex Grinch’s defense this year. USC allowed Cal to rack up 527 yards of offense on 6.5 yards per play and needed late-game heroics by Williams, MarShawn Lloyd, and Austin Davis to take the lead. And that was STILL almost wasn’t enough to avoid their third straight loss.
Alex Grinch has been much maligned since he was Lincoln Riley’s defensive coordinator at Oklahoma and at this point, Riley’s decision to keep him around is going to cost USC a shot at the Pac-12 title. The DC had no answers for a walk-on QB in their loss to Utah last week and he inadvertently admitted that he didn’t comb through the film prior to the game. And today, the Trojans’ season nearly went into a death spiral at the hands of a Cal offense that ranked 65th in offensive SP+ heading into the contest.
The reigning Heisman Trophy winner Williams is once again having an incredible season and is well on his way to be the No. 1 overall pick in next year’s NFL Draft. And yet it’s not going to matter for USC as a whole if the defense continues to deliver poor performances. 7-5 is very much on the table with the Trojans closing with a brutal stretch of Washington, Oregon, and UCLA to end the year and it could’ve easily been 6-6 had they not rallied against Cal. It would be a shame if we look back at the run of one of the all-time great college QB’s and find that his head coach/DC couldn’t hold up their end of the bargain.