The Trojans keep getting themselves into trouble just to show they’re good enough to get themselves out. It happens again Saturday, against UCLA
So who are they? The worst good team in college football? The best bad team in college football? Are they better at dodging bullets, or throwing them, at those final, fire-alarm moments? Or, at this point, does it matter? Thirty years after Todd Marinovich threw enough lightning, in this very same Rose Bowl, to outlast Tommy Maddox, USC’s Kedon Slovis brushed a 28-10 deficit off his lapels and kept coming up with touchdowns until he had enough. The decisive one was an 8-yard scoring pass to Amon-Ra St. Brown with 16 seconds left, and the Trojans had swerved their way to a 43-38 victory over UCLA and a 5-0 record,13 days before Christmas. “We had 30 minutes to get something done (in the second half) and we needed every one of them,” coach Clay Helton said. Although the Trojans were already buzzed into next week’s Pac-12 championship game against either Washington, Oregon or the original cast of “South Pacific,” they spent most of the day as the second-best team on the field. They’ve done that a lot. For the third consecutive year they had no clue how to stop Chip Kelly’s offense, and they inadvertently launched the 2021 Heisman Trophy campaign of Dorian Thompson-Robinson, the UCLA quarterback who had four touchdown passes and only six incompletions. But the Bruins, as improved as they are, need a few more rehearsals before the awards are presented, They jumped offside on back-to-back plays to rescue USC from a third-and-10, and Slovis put USC ahead 36-35 with an across-the-body throw to Drake London.
