USC Football: Caleb Williams Diagnoses Trojans' Approach To Rest Of Season
Ahead of a crucial game tonight against the Oregon Ducks, USC quarterback Caleb Williams has clearly changed his mindset for the rest of the 2023 NCAA football season.
Thuc Nhi Nguyen of The Los Angeles Times reports that Williams appears only focused on one opponent at a time after a devastating loss last week to the Washington Huskies (9-0, 6-0) who appear to be the front runner for the Pac-12 North this year.
“It’s a one-game season right now,” Williams reflected.
Coming into this year, the Trojans were the clear favorite to win the Pac 12 and had aspirations to appear in their first College Football Playoff since it's birth in 2014. After three losses this year, it seems likely USC (7-3, 5-2) will miss out on the CFB playoff once again and are now hanging on a by a thread to win the Pac-12 South.
With the CFB Playoff clearly out of sight, it seems like USC's aspirations now are to play in the Rose Bowl on New Year's Day.
As of right now, USC remains in first place for the South division and still controls its own destiny. But if the Trojans suffer a loss to Oregon tonight and Utah pulls off an upset victory over Washington this afternoon, the Trojans will fall to second place in the South as the Utes hold the tiebreaker for first place as they defeated the Trojans at home in week eight.
Coming into today's game against the Ducks, the Trojans will be without former defensive coordinator Alex Grinch as he was relieved from his duties as DC last week.
For the remainder of the season, USC will have co defensive coordinators in defensive line coach Shaun Nua and inside line backers coach Brian Odom leading the team.
Nua and Odom both began their careers with USC when head coach Lincoln Riley made his arrival last year. Before coaching at USC, Odom coached with Riley at Oklahoma from 2019-2021.
What's at stake for Williams
With Williams focused on one game at a time, tonight's game could be the biggest game in his collegiate career as it's a make or break game for him and the Trojans.
Not only does Williams have to focus on winning tonight's game for the opportunity to play in the Rose Bowl, he also has to pull of a victory to keep his hopes alive to win his second straight Heisman and become the second player to ever win the award in back to back season's as Ohio State's Archie Griffin did in 1974 and 1975.
If Williams does win the Heisman in back-to-back seasons, it will almost guarantee himself earning the selection as the number one pick in this year's NFL Draft.
Recently, their has been speculation if Williams should be the number one pick in this years draft and that's partially due to the poor play of the Trojans this year and also the emergence of quarterbacks Drake May and Michael Penix Jr.
Oregon is coming into this weekends game ranked sixth in the country and are being led by potential Heisman candidate Bo Nix at quarterback.
This year, Williams has played tremendously for the Trojans as he has thrown for 2,958 yards with 28 touchdowns. However, the elephant in the room for him has been turnovers as he has thrown four interceptions and fumbled the ball seven times with three of them going the other way.
Ahead of tonight's game, the Ducks are ranked as CFB's number two offense just behind the LSU Tigers while USC's defense is ranked 120, one of the worst in college football.
Kickoff is scheduled to begin at 7:30 PM PT, with live coverage slated to air on Fox.
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