In reply to: I don't think anyone is blaming Pyne posted by gordonbombay
The only questions is whether Williams would have still been the difference if ND had stopped the run and ran the ball reasonably effectively itself.
If you put Slovis or Dart under center instead of him, Southern Cal does not win. And they're not 10-1 entering the game.
Every time they needed a play, he made it.
Play number 1: With 2:18 to go in the second quarter, USC faced a second and 8. Williams dropped back to pass, was flushed from the pocket, danced around, ran to his right, and threw the ball about 40 yards for a 23 yard completion to the 25. Had he not made that play, USC would have been facing 3rd and long around midfield, 3rd and REALLY long had he been sacked. Instead, they moved on to score a TD (after another scramble play that he kept alive long enough to get a holding call.)
Play number 2: With a 10 point lead and the ball on the ND 16, USC faces 4th and 2. One of Notre Dame's slow linebackers comes too far upfield (or too slowly upfield...either way, I doubt the plan was for him to jog himself out of position) and Williams sprints in for the final nail in our coffin. Had he thrown an incomplete pass or otherwise not made the first down and the rest of the game played out as it did, USC would have been looking at a 3 point win.
That's just two plays, but if those two plays go our way, we might have been looking at a different result. The fact that we realize how silly that hypothetical is shows just how big of a difference Williams was - of course he made those plays and of course he would have made more.
STOP SLAMMING REEEEZE
It was his ability as a QB that opened things up for the USC running backs late in the game. If ND didn't have to spy and do so many things trying to account for Williams they would have played the run very differently.
It was his ability as a QB that opened things up for the USC running backs late in the game. If ND didn't have to spy and do so many things trying to account for Williams they would have played the run very differently.
Zero chance their running game would have had the same efffectiveness with a different QB.