Mahomes is creative, he’s crafty, he’ll buy some time, he’ll get you a first down-but Caleb can take it to the house.” Mahomes is not an explosive runner with the football. He’s an explosive runner with the football. Leinart’s old teammate Reggie Bush, who won a Heisman himself, agrees with the Mahomes comps, and goes even further: “The thing that I think is different between Caleb and Patrick is, Caleb is an explosive athlete. That’s thanks to Williams’s propensity to play “off-schedule,” as NFL observers like to call it, improvising greatness with his hands and feet. When the Arizona Cardinals traded down in this year’s draft, Kimes says, “Everybody knew why.” They wanted to increase their odds of a premium pick in next year’s draft, which Williams will headline.Īnd already the NFL comparisons have gone into overdrive-with the most popular being to Patrick Mahomes, only the best QB alive. Williams’s performance was so impressive that it began to influence what was happening in the NFL-a year before he could even go pro. It was just a certain energy and vibe that needed to be lit and rekindled in those players.” “I got good players on my team! I mean, USC was four-and-eight, and we got a lot of the same players that were on that team. “I come in with a certain energy, vibe, and will to win,” Williams tells me. Williams, who in person is unusually poised and focused, was characteristically modest in explaining the resuscitation to me, noting that all the Trojans really needed was a shift in perspective. What typically takes years happened in a flash. This year, they're off to an undefeated start Williams, of course, is already generating repeat-Heisman buzz. Last season, they led a frankly stunning turnaround, compiling an 11-3 record, a microwaved return to the team’s glory days, when USC used to tussle with the Lakers and Dodgers for LA sports supremacy. The school dangled a contract rumored to be worth $110 million to lure Oklahoma coach Lincoln Riley, perhaps the game’s preeminent quarterback builder, who then promptly extended an invitation to Williams-who’d spent his freshman year playing for Riley in Norman-to transfer West and become a star in LA. The ugly record followed years of mediocrity and occasioned a dramatic overhaul. The Trojans went 4-8 in 2021, the year before Williams joined the squad. Williams is still a few weeks from commencing his junior season, but anticipation is building as the Trojans prepare to resume one of the most-talked-about restoration projects in college football: returning USC to the glory its fans feel is their birthright. Later this summer, the team will hand out thousands of Caleb Williams bobbleheads-an honor granted only to an elite roster of non-baseball luminaries, including Elton John, Hello Kitty, and Billie Jean King. His presence speaks to the only-in-LA life afforded to a quarterback who makes USC great: The Dodgers have invited Williams to throw out the game’s first pitch. His path is cleared by a pack of thick-necked and wide-hipped young men with varyingly successful beards, his 17 offensive linemen. Caleb Williams-the quarterback of a resurgent University of Southern California football team, and quite suddenly the pride and joy of Los Angeles-steps off a tinted-window party bus in the Dodger Stadium parking lot.
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