It had been only two days since USC’s disappointing season came to a crushing conclusion against its crosstown rival, but Caleb Williams already was back under the lights. Cameras were rolling. A crowd was chanting his name. Ca-leb! Ca-leb! Ca-leb!
It’s the sort of scene USC’s star quarterback has grown increasingly familiar with through his second — and presumably last — season in L.A. as his exposure and expectations skyrocketed, a potent combination made all the more volatile by the Trojans’ second-half tailspin. Losing five of his last six games only ratcheted up the attention around the quarterback, challenging him in ways he’d never been challenged before.
By the end, as an ovation greeted him in the Coliseum tunnel after the loss to UCLA, Williams looked emotionally spent, worn down by an exhausting level of losing he’d never experienced.
A couple of days later and a couple of miles down Vermont Avenue, Williams seemed, at least for the moment, as though he’s rejuvenated. He smiled as a crowd of kids, gathered at the Challengers Boys & Girls Club in South L.A., roared upon his arrival, hanging on his every word.
Caleb Williams might have played in his final game for USC following a 38-20 loss to UCLA that underlines how far the Trojans have fallen this season.
He was once a Boys & Girls Club kid himself, he told the crowd. He’s been coming to this particular club periodically for the last two years, to lead an anti-bullying campaign and help however he can. Recently, his mom dropped off Halloween candy for the kids, each bag inscribed with a greeting from Williams.
On this day, he’s here on behalf of his foundation, Caleb Cares, as well as Dr Pepper, to hand out a giant $50,000 check as part of Dr Pepper’s Tuition Toss. His job — helping two girls to throw footballs into inflatable Dr Pepper cans — seems to elicit genuine joy from Williams, who hadn’t found much of that over the previous six weeks.
Soon after he handed out the first $50,000 tuition check to the winner, Kamari, he called up the runner-up, Julieta, to tell her Caleb Cares plans to match Dr Pepper’s contribution with another $50,000 in tuition for her. As he hands her a giant check of her own, her dismay turns into elation.
Putting disappointment behind won’t be so simple for Williams, for whom the spotlight has proved particularly harsh of late.
Not only did USC fall well short of the goals its quarterback had jotted down in his phone before the season — a Pac-12 title, a playoff berth, a national title, a second Heisman — but in the process, Williams’ every move was carefully picked apart under a microscope, feeding perceptions from the darkest dregs of college sports fandom.
When a tearful postgame embrace with his mom was captured on TV cameras this month, the conversation continued for nearly a week.
Some of the criticism was of his own making: In October, he clapped back at a trolling Notre Dame fan, boldly declaring himself “a lion” and noting that “everybody wants to be in these two 12.5 shoes right here.” Then, after the loss to UCLA, in what’s likely to be his last home game at USC, Williams avoided the media altogether.
Williams says he has tried to take speculation in stride, but anyone could see it has at times rankled him. Even so, he still dazzled on the field. Those close to Williams eagerly point out that his numbers — 303 passing yards per game, 3.4 total touchdowns per game — haven’t changed much from his jaw-dropping Heisman campaign of 324 passing yards and 3.71 touchdowns per game.
But however you frame it, even Williams won’t hide from the fact that this season was nothing like the one before. The losing hit him especially hard.
“I’m still learning things I need to get better at,” Williams says.
He has tried not to linger too long on the discontent, instead focusing on the little things as much as he can — one day, one task at a time — even as big-picture questions about his future loom.
USC quarterback Caleb Williams says he hasn’t decided whether he’ll leave early for the NFL, so Saturday’s game against UCLA could be his finale.
For the time being, Williams plans to tune those out. He’ll consider his options over the coming days, weighing pros and cons using the same process he and his father used to determine his transfer to USC, and spend spare time with his bulldog, Supa, who often has been his best source of emotional support this season.
It has been an emotionally taxing year for Williams, and that’s before the painful churn of the NFL draft process. But after mulling it over for 48 hours, the quarterback suggested framing his disappointing season in a different way.
“This was one of my most important years of playing football so far,” Williams said.
“I’ve never been in this situation, where I’m 7-5 and there are no playoff hopes at the end of the season. I’m dealing with it emotionally, dealing with it spiritually and physically. It’s been one of the most important years I think I’ve had. It’s tricky. I’ve had to have talks with Lincoln [Riley, USC’s coach] — because obviously I haven’t been through it — or with my family members or people like that, just how to deal with this and lead, how to stay the same person I was before the season or after our first loss or second loss. So it was different. It was a learning process.”
“I’m dealing with it emotionally, dealing with it spiritually and physically. It’s been one of the most important years I think I’ve had.”
— Caleb Williams on his 2023 season with USC
Among the lessons Williams has tried to internalize, he says, is how to maintain better control of his emotions. Though, as he explains himself, it seems he’s still torn on what to take from his experience.
On one hand, staying true to himself is “what’s most important,” Williams says, and that means wearing his passion — or heartbreak — on his sleeve. On the other, he seems to understand the subtext that soon enough he’ll be the face of an NFL franchise, one with an owner who might be concerned about his quarterback crying in plain view after a difficult defeat.
“There’s a time and a place for everything,” Williams says. “But I’m far from ashamed about showing my emotion after any of the losses this year. It shows truth. It shows care. All that. I’m getting better at it, showing it in the right place and the right time. But if I won a national championship or a Super Bowl years down the line — if I was winning, nobody would be saying anything.”
But that wasn’t how this season went for Williams, and there’s little reason to think another at USC would leave him better positioned for his future, no matter how much he has hinted at that possibility.
His father, Carl, already started a firestorm when he suggested to GQ in September that Williams had “two shots at the apple” and might return to school “if there’s not a good situation” waiting for him in the NFL. Carl Williams has done plenty of due diligence on the matter since, taking meetings and speaking to whomever he could, across different sports, about how to maximize his son’s leverage. But no one around Williams seems to consider returning to USC for a third year a likely outcome any longer.
“Carl isn’t out there to beat the system,” said a person close to the family but unauthorized to speak publicly.
Caleb told The Times it’s still “a game-time decision” whether he declares for the NFL. The deadline for his decision is Jan. 15.
“There’s a time and a place for everything. But I’m far from ashamed about showing my emotion after any of the losses this year. It shows truth. It shows care.”
— Caleb Williams on maintaining better control of his emotions
He can’t help but weigh what he’s leaving on the table if he does decide to go pro. But his teammates at USC know he has nothing left to prove.
“He has earned everything he’s got,” offensive tackle Jonah Monheim said.
“He has that character, he has that attitude that you have respect for, that you want to play for,” center Justin Dedich added. “And I think who he is off the field is something that I will remember for the rest of my life.”
At the Challengers Boys & Girls Club, of course, they’d love to see him stay. There he gets no questions about his football future, no doubts about his ability to lead. After every game Williams has played at USC, each of the kids at the club — 160 in all — has written him a card. It doesn’t matter if the Trojans have won or lost.
Caleb Williams didn’t talk with media after USC’s blowout win over Nevada, and Lincoln Riley offered muted praise despite his quarterback’s success. Is something wrong?
“When Caleb is around, these kids straighten up and fly right,” says Kim Washington, a vice president on the Boys & Girls Club’s executive board. “They want his attention.”
The mere mention of any negative discourse around Williams gets Washington worked up. She has seen too much from him to stand for it.
“Here you have an athlete who actually cares about his community,” Washington said. “We need more leaders like him that are in touch with his feelings and understand the importance of mental health and also how to ask for help and lead the way for others who may not want to ask. Everybody needs a leader sometimes, and he’s become that.”
Maybe that won’t move the needle for an NFL general manager. But talk to anyone around this club, and they’ll tell of the tremendous legacy Williams already has left in L.A., even if his résumé never includes a Pac-12 title or a College Football Playoff trip.
“These kids will keep thinking about him and watch him regardless of where he’s at,” Washington says. “Do we want him to stay around? Absolutely. But we all want the best for him. And I absolutely believe he’ll continue to bring what he brought here somewhere else.”
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