Caleb Williams, USC stumble against Washington

LOS ANGELES — They wasted Caleb Williams. Again.

They’ve wasted the best quarterback in school history, time and time again this season, this season that was supposed to chase for a national championship. Okay — at least, a College Football Playoff. Okay — at least, a Pac-12 championship. Expectations fell away with each win that felt like a loss, each loss that head coach Lincoln Riley insisted was a couple plays like a win, and all the while, one of the greatest seasons by a quarterback in modern collegiate football history has fallen into shadows.

Saturday, against Washington, was the culmination. There was no blinking. There was no breathing. There was hardly time to think, or you would miss the next act of the show that had rolled into the Coliseum this Saturday with the evening fog, in front of the swarm of NFL execs and scouts planning entire franchise’s futures around the duel of two special conductors. Williams went at it against the Huskies’ Heisman hopeful Michael Penix Jr., spinning away from tackles like dreidels, sonning defenders who tried to tackle him on runs, putting up as perfect of a line as you could dream of in a marquee conference matchup: 27-of-35, 332 yards, five total touchdowns, no picks.

And it wasn’t enough, because not even superhuman has been enough, not to lift this deeply flawed team with all its fight and hunger past the failings of a defense that got shredded to bits yet again by the Huskies. When Williams crumpled in the fourth quarter on a third-down sack, down three and an attempt to match Washington unsuccessful, the night was already over.

USC wasted Caleb Williams, again, in a 52-42 barnburner of a loss to Washington Saturday night, a loss that — barring a miraculous win over Oregon next week — all but eliminates Pac-12 hopes. Williams was left staring at the heavens, trudging off the field, after a late-game ball to Tahj Washington went incomplete.

Everyone with half a brain, in a game featuring two defenses with gaping holes and two unrelenting offenses, expected a ludicrous point total between Trojans and Huskies. But you couldn’t have expected the speed. Realization quickly set in, by intermission of a breakneck circus act with 601 first-half yards and nine scores, that the ol’ whoever-gets-a-stop winning adage wouldn’t apply. No, this game would hinge on whoever-messes-up-last.

The two signal-callers whipped three-minutes-or-less drives back and forth throughout the first half, Williams looking as sharp and cool as he’d been for weeks, Penix Jr. cycling through progressions in rapid-fire time to dissect wide-open holes in an inept USC secondary.

On a 3rd-and-1 on USC’s first drive, Williams beat a defender to the edge, then 360-degree-juked a Washington defender out of his shoes; a few drives later, Penix Jr. produced one of the highlights of the season, flinging a dart while falling out of bounds that somehow zipped past a thicket of USC defensive backs into the waiting arms of tight end Devin Culp.

Later in the second quarter, in a stroke of brilliance by Lincoln Riley, Williams handed off to Zachariah Branch, who took a few steps — stopped — and pivoted to pitch back to Williams, who hit a lick-his-fingers open Tahj Washington for a touchdown in a play that looked like kids drawing in the mud with sticks in the backyard. Not to be outdone, Penix Jr. calmly carved up USC’s defense like an early Thanksgiving turkey, finishing off a drive with a laser TD pass to Ja’lynn Polk that he caught so anticlimactically he almost seemed bored.

Boredom, though, was impossible in this first half from a television network’s dreams, exactly four drives that didn’t result in touchdowns and both run games and pass games flaming.

Washington and USC combined for 601 first-half yards and nine scores. But the first blemish came when Williams, who’s struggled at times with holding onto the ball, tried for a little too long to extend a play at the end of the first half and was stripped — setting up Washington for a short touchdown that felt titanic, giving the Huskies a 35-28 lead and the ball back after the half in a game where USC’s downtrodden defense seemed unworthy of any trust to get one stop, let alone two.

But for the second straight game, linebacker Eric Gentry took advantage of opportunity. After falling down the depth chart for much of the year, he had a breakout against Cal, and with his lanky reach tipped a third-quarter pass from Penix Jr. into a diving Christian Roland-Wallace’s arms.

And Williams wasted little time bouncing back, trying for a QB keeper on a 4th-and-1 only to think better of it, spin away from a lineman and spiral a 25-yarder to Brenden Rice in the end zone for approximately his 1,547th how-in-the-world act of magic on the night.

But after that Gentry pick, USC’s defense couldn’t swat a fly. The Huskies entered Saturday ranked 117th out of 130 teams in rushing yards per game, with 102; they ended Saturday with 333, back Dillon Johnson bursting through wide-open holes for an incomprehensible 263-yard game and four touchdowns.

Williams’ legacy, his accomplishments, will stand at USC forever. But the Trojans’ inability to capitalize for any meaningful hardware, fielding one of the greatest quarterbacks in collegiate history, will stand forever, too.