For the first time since 2005, USC will be sending a player to New York for the Heisman Trophy ceremony.
Trojan quarterback Caleb Williams on Monday was named a finalist for the award given every year to college football’s top player, as determined by a vote of more than 900 sports journalists and past winners. The Heisman ceremony will be held Saturday at Lincoln Center in Manhattan and will be televised on ESPN at 5 p.m. PT.
Along with Williams, Georgia quarterback Stetson Bennett, TCU quarterback Max Duggan and Ohio State quarterback C.J. Stroud were also named Heisman finalists.
A sophomore, Williams transferred to USC from Oklahoma in February, going west to join Lincoln Riley, the head coach who recruited him to Norman with a vision for how he could turn the Washington, D.C. native into a Heisman winner.
At USC, Williams quickly won over his new teammates with his exuberant attitude and was named team captain. He quickly announced himself by throwing for eight touchdowns and running for two more in USC’s first three games. Then after struggling for much of the Trojans’ Week 4 game against Oregon State, he led a game-winning drive, throwing a perfect pass to Jordan Addison for a go-ahead 21-yard touchdown with 1:13 left.
He saved two of his best performances for the final two weeks of the regular season. Williams threw for a career-high 470 yards (the fourth-most in USC history) in a 48-45 victory over UCLA, then ran for three touchdowns in a 38-27 win against Notre Dame, twice striking the famed Heisman pose after reaching the end zone.
USC went 11-1 with Williams leading the way before losing to Utah, 47-24, in the Pac-12 championship game on Friday night. USC jumped out to a 14-3 lead but Williams injured his hamstring during the second touchdown drive. Clearly limited by the muscle pull, Williams remained in the game, limping to the line of scrimmage as he tried to rally the Trojans.
All told in his first season at USC, Williams finished fourth nationally in passing yards with 4,075 and tied for first in passing touchdowns with 37. He completed 66.1% of his passes and threw just four interceptions. Williams’ feet became one of the more thrilling parts of his game as he spun out of sacks and turned seemingly-dead plays into scramble drills.
His 47 total touchdowns and 4,225 total yards broke USC single-season records, as did his 372 rushing yards as a quarterback. He is currently No. 7 on USC’s single-season completions list with 296 and is on pace to set the USC record for the lowest rate of interceptions in a season (currently 0.9% on 407 passing attempts).
Williams’ 2022 campaign earned him first-team All-American honors from Pro Football Focus. He is also a finalist for the Walter Camp, Davey O’Brien, Maxwell and Manning Awards.
He is seeking to become USC’s seventh official Heisman winner. He is the first finalist to come out of USC since 2005, when running back Reggie Bush won the award, which he later returned as part of NCAA sanctions. USC quarterback Matt Leinart was also a finalist that season one year after he won the Heisman in 2004.
Stroud, a Rancho Cucamonga product in his third season with the Buckeyes, is a Heisman finalist for the second year in a row. He was fourth in voting last year. He came into this season regarded as the front-runner and remained the favorite as Ohio State piled up impressive numbers through the first eight games.
But he struggled against Northwestern, the worst team in the Big Ten, and he couldn’t rally the Buckeyes in the second half of their most recent game, a 45-23 home loss to Michigan.
Still, Stroud has the nation’s highest passer rating and is tied for the lead with 37 touchdown passes.
Bennett has quarterbacked defending national champion Georgia to a second straight spot in the College Football Playoff and is 24-1 as the Bulldogs’ starter since last season.
The sixth-year player from Blackshear, Georgia, was the MVP of the Southeastern Conference championship game after throwing for 274 yards and four touchdowns in a 50-30 victory over LSU that ran the Bulldogs’ record to 13-0.
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Of Georgia’s three all-time wins over a top-ranked team, Bennett was the quarterback for two of them. He was at the controls for the Bulldogs’ win over Alabama in the national championship game last January, and he passed for two TDs and ran for another in a 27-13 win over Tennessee last month.
Duggan willed TCU to its first CFP appearance with an inspiring performance in the Big 12 championship game against Kansas State.
Duggan, who had heart surgery two years ago, was at the center of one of the signature sequences of the season. It happened late in the fourth quarter when he broke loose for 40 yards and then, visibly out of breath, ran for an 8-yard TD and completed his 2-point pass to bring the Frogs back from an 11-point, fourth-quarter deficit. Duggan came up just short of the goal line on a run in overtime, and the Frogs lost for the first time this season, 31-28.
The fourth-year player from Council Bluffs, Iowa, was Gary Patterson’s starter for two seasons before first-year coach Sonny Dykes picked Chandler Morris over Duggan in the preseason. Duggan regained the job for the second game because of an injury to Morris and ended up leading the Big 12 in every major passing category.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.