TMG Newsmaker Of The Week: Kedon Slovis
Quarterbacks develop their reputations by winning titles—national championships, Super Bowls—and by coming up with game-winning TD passes in the final quarter, final minutes and final seconds.
The name of Kedon Slovis is hardly on any lists right now. The sophomore quarterback from USC still has miles to go before he can take a pause and reflect.
But he is headed in the right direction.
Consider the way Slovis and USC began this COVID-19 impacted college football season: a pair of wins over Arizona and Arizona State in which Slovis led a USC comeback in the final quarter and threw a game winner in the final seconds.
Without those accomplishments, USC would not have been in the position to finish its regular season unbeaten and gain a spot in the Pac-12 title game on Friday in last week's annual cross-town meeting with UCLA.
Slovis came into the UCLA game with one career achievement, a school record 526 passing yards in USC's 52-35 rout of the Bruins last season.
On Saturday, Slovis topped that effort—not with stats, but—with two remarkable passes-a 35 yard improbable completion which gave the Trojans a first down on the 8-yard line in the final seconds when the Trojans had trailed by 18 points in the third quarter and 12 points earlier in the fourth quarter.
This time they trailed by only two points and were a chip-shot field goal away from another miracle win.
Slovis took the doubt out of a possible bad snap or missed or blocked attempt by throwing an 8-yard TD pass to Tyler Vaughn in the final seconds of what turned into a 43-38 USC victory.
For that, Slovis is TMG's Newsmaker of The Week.