Caleb Williams caps a brilliant sophomore season with Heisman Trophy
NEW YORK – When coach Lincoln Riley bolted from the University of Oklahoma after last season, and his star freshman quarterback Caleb Williams followed, along with many other transfers to the University of Southern California, the expectation was that USC would return to the upper echelon of college football.
That expectation was met and then some. USC won 11 games, seven more than last season, and its highest win total since 2017. If it had not been for a loss in the Pac-12 championship, USC would be in the College Football Playoff for the first time with a chance to win its first national title since 2004.
The national championship will evade the Trojans this season, but Williams, who won the Heisman Trophy on Saturday night in New York, gives USC a consolation prize.
Williams, who has been celebrated for his pregame outfits and painted nails, wore a custom tan suit designed by Gucci and Adidas, along with “boots that look like loafers” and clear nail polish.
Williams was brilliant all season, beating defenses with his arms and legs, finishing with 4,075 passing yards and 47 total touchdowns. His value was never more apparent than in USC’s Pac-12 championship loss to Utah, in which he sustained a leg injury that left him hobbling. Though Williams managed to stay in the game, USC’s offense could not muster anything with him injured.
Despite finishing his sophomore season as college football’s most outstanding player, Williams didn’t start out as the favorite. Late-night television starts for West Coast teams, in combination with a Pac-12 conference that has historically been lackluster, may have kept Williams’ name out of Heisman favorites early in the season.
But after a game against rival UCLA, then ranked No. 18, in which Williams willed his team to victory by amassing 503 total yards (470 passing, 33 rushing), along with three total touchdowns, he seemed to have the Heisman secured. (The game also began at 8 p.m. Eastern.)
“It took an entire season for the rest of the country to catch on,” said Carson Palmer, a former USC quarterback and the 2002 Heisman winner.
It was the second year that Ohio State quarterback C.J. Stroud smiled and clapped as another finalist won the Heisman Trophy. Last year, Stroud was a finalist but finished last in votes among the finalists, as Alabama’s Bryce Young took home the award. Young was not a finalist this year, and Stroud seemed destined to win for most of the season, especially after a game against Michigan State in which he threw for 361 yards and six touchdowns. But Stroud struggled over the final stretch of the season, which included a 45-23 loss to Michigan.
This might have been Stroud’s last chance at the Heisman. He will be NFL draft eligible after this season, and is projected to be a first-round pick.
Of the finalists, Texas Christian quarterback Max Duggan seemed the most improbable before the season began. Duggan was a three-year starter, but he was benched in favor of redshirt freshman Chandler Morris, then thrust back into the starting lineup after Morris was injured in the first week. Duggan led Texas Christian a 12-1 record and College Football Playoff birth and his numbers were stellar – 3,321 passing yards, 36 total touchdowns, and yet still a step behind Williams.
Quarterback Stetson Bennett was aiming to be Georgia’s first winner since Herschel Walker in 1982, the only finalist to win his conference title game and a former walk-on, but he didn’t have the gaudy statistics of the other finalists.
Williams is USC’s eighth Heisman winner – technically – but the NCAA vacated Reggie Bush’s 2005 win after determining that he and his family had accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts from two California agents while he was in college. Bush returned the award in 2010, and was initially banned from associating with USC permanently, but the ban was reduced to 10 years in 2017.