DEION KNOWS: HOW TO FRIGHTEN THE IMMORTALITY OUT OF CALEB WILLIAMS
The USC master had six more touchdown passes, but that almost wasn’t enough against a robust Colorado rally, which proved Sanders not only can coach but stirs football’s Next Great Quarterback
He enjoyed a Bobbleheads giveaway at Dodger Stadium — his own, not Mookie Betts — and has deals with AT&T and Neutrogena that allow dinner with an owner instead of taking a car at the local dealer. No one has made more money in the NIL crusade than the quarterback at USC, Caleb Williams, who also is the most vital college football player of his time.
It’s almost impossible to win a Heisman Trophy two years in a row, with players steered by transfer portals and the realignment of bodies. Yet Williams likely will do so again. He threw six more touchdown passes in building a 41-14 lead over Colorado, and he’s the one who says, “I don’t want to be forgotten. That means immortality, and that means championships.” He wants to win it all this season, before approaching an NFL draft unless it pushes him to a franchise he dislikes — Chicago Bears, say it — and stays in Los Angeles for the third Heisman. By then, he’ll be nominated for an Oscar and Emmy because he stuck around so long.
But if Deion Sanders can figure a way to steal the mortality of an immortal, he might have sabotaged his title dreams Saturday. That 41-14 advantage turned into a 48-41 howler with time still on the clock, meaning Sanders — who I thought was more an overseer and witty publicist than a coach — might be worth more than $280 million in marketing expenses to his university. In the final 21 minutes in Boulder, his son, Shedeur, led the Buffaloes to four blurry touchdowns that kept Williams on the bench and invalidated his dream. There is no doubt what he’ll do on this level and the next, with his scoring passes traveling longer in the air and his accuracy and efficiency off the charts. But he does not play defense.
And if USC doesn’t have an intramural brotherhood on campus to find better players, or those who listen to coordinator Alex Grinch, then Williams will leave without a championship. With Sanders and his staff realizing their offensive talent could create a mess — a week after they were dominated 42-6 by Oregon and outgained 522-199 — the sense is strong that the Trojans are a one-man operation.
“A wonderful win,” Sanders said afterward. “I’m just joking.”
But was he? Didn’t he just show Jim Harbaugh, Mike Norvell, Kirby Smart and the coach at Washington, Kalen DeBoer, how to bottle up Williams? It’s not about grabbing 51 players in the portal. It’s not about bringing new celebrities to town each week, including wrestling star Mark Henry, who spoke to his team. Sanders just showed how USC can be slowed with a magnificent quarterback, to the point Colorado fans are overjoyed and gamblers are thrilled after betting Colorado with 21 1/2 in the bank. Caleb Williams cries when he loses a game.
He’s going to lose again, maybe in two weeks at Notre Dame, which hopefully uses more than 10 men on defense.
“Overall, I'm really proud," Sanders said. "Not only of the young men, (but) the coaches, the fan base, the student body. I'm truly proud of the way we represented Boulder today. If you can't see what's coming with CU football, you've lost your mind. You're just a flat-out hater if you can't see what's going on and what's going to transpire over the next several months. Something's wrong with you.”
Please tell him it’s not about flat-out hating Colorado. He figured out the trick to handling USC. Dealing with the Trojans is a lesson in two-team media work. There was Williams, delighted in a performance that included 403 passing yards. “Things have been working,” he said post-game. “You have to keep going, keep working hard, that’s the only way things keep being smooth and feeling that way.”
But the defense? Every week, coach Lincoln Riley must answer more questions about Grinch. Such as: Why bring him from Oklahoma? Why not make a change at the position last offseason? Does he have the old belief?
“Yes, I do,” he said again after the same query. “When something doesn't go our way, it doesn't look like last year. Not to the trained eye, not to a coach. Now, we still got plenty to correct. There's a lot that's improved and we've obviously got to put it all together.”
When would that be? “We didn't play a very good second half really on any of the three sides. We're going to own the win, we're going to own the mistakes, we're going to own the good, we're going to go back to work,” Riley said. “They made plays. And we kind of didn’t. When you stop (making plays), especially on the road, against a team that has some talent like they do, they’re going to make a run. And they did. It’s self-inflicted errors.”
Oregon didn’t have any of those issues. Why? “Coach Grinch, he's doing a great job. I mean, we're letting him down," safety Bryson Shaw said. “That's point blank period. We're letting him down. I don't know what to tell y'all. As players, we are letting him down. I mean, he's putting us in the right spot. We're not making plays. We're missing tackles. We're not doing our job. I'm not doing my job. We're letting him down. … There's no other coach we'd ever have. He's doing his job. We're not doing ours as players. That's all there is to it.”
Said Grinch, before the game of Shedeur and the offense: “What you see is an explosive offense and a quarterback and someone in the vicinity of 80 percent completion percentage, which obviously raises eyebrows. The ability to extend plays and still throw the ball down field is obviously alarming as you watch it.”
Sanders already has said his son won’t be “two to nobody” in the NFL draft, never a “backseat rider” to Williams. “He drives a Maybach. He doesn’t have a driver in it — he drives it,” he said. So, no, Shedeur will wait until 2025 while his father uses him to recruit more weapons.
“He's been built and reared for this his whole life," Deion said. “The kid has always won, he's always been dominant, he's always been smart and intelligent and concise, he's always been a competitor. He's always given us a chance to succeed in every level. I could go on and on, but I don't want to sound like the dad. The kid can flat-out play.”
We know that. So does Shedeur, who hit freshman Omarion Miller for nine receptions and 196 yards. “We just had to lock in and understand, ‘Look, this is not going to be a recap of what happened last week. We just not going out like that,’ ’’ he said. "Whatever it takes. That was the whole motto this week.”
Same for Miller. “Y’all ain’t seen nothing yet,” he said.
Even Caleb Williams was aroused. What else did he have to do on the sideline but watch? “Deion and that team, they brought a lot of energy to Colorado,” he said. “Something about going on the road — it gets you up early in the morning. Can’t sleep at night. It’s fun.”
Until a 41-14 score is reduced to seven. That’s when immortality will take place on another awards stand, in New York, not on some field in January.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.