Heisman Trophy 2022 update

 Heisman Trophy 2022

If there is one thing the United States has not done, it seems unthinkable, that we have never won a game despite being in first place each time in history. Now, I know this may be due to COVID but still to think that there is no chance for us to win a championship by just winning every-year and making sure they play great to get our way would be foolish of us. The answer that can probably be given is if you are talking about last year’s USC Trojans football team, maybe even better than their final season performance and you just keep on adding more examples of why they did not reach the title game because we didn't win anything. We were in a tiebreaker situation after two games against Alabama and Utah and ended up at No. 8 out of 12 teams after three games with 11 total points, so we failed to do what was expected of us during those four losses. As someone who believes in success, I feel like this fact is irrelevant. To me, the most important aspect is that our team competed well. Our players competed hard. They put their heart into the process. All these things mattered immensely and I think you will see where I stand on everyone else’s feelings about us ending up nowhere.

The other factor is that we had an incredible coaching staff last year. Everybody from our coaches all the way down to front office staff members knew what the whole goal was and knew that we could do that so quickly. There were countless times when coach Brian Daboll came to CCSI last year saying he wanted to be a part of something special, so we saw him bring a new strategy, vision, and mindset to not only USC football but the entire school. And that was exactly how I felt. Coach Brian really made sure everybody knew what we could do, that we needed to go above and beyond anything we thought we could accomplish, and with our outstanding quarterback, Drew Lock, I believe we definitely did. He's the best running back prospect ever to come over from Oklahoma City. He has everything, speed, strength in his legs, athleticism, everything you want in your running back from an offensive standpoint. My main problem has been a lack of accountability. It just wasn’t clear enough for the coach. I didn’t always see where our coaches were at as far as their role and how much of it is left to coach and our team is responsible for it. Every day, every play, every tackle, everything was under control by my teammates, which made me feel like my job was getting harder and tougher by the hour. So while I am willing to let another person make mistakes, I have certain expectations from myself to help set expectations for others, especially to improve and learn along the way. These expectations included improving on the field, watching videos of opponents' defenders to figure out what worked in our favor and figure out what didn’t and try to do the same or surpass them. In the end, we went 0–4 and lost the regular season game, yet we still got to keep our hopes alive by playing through the spring break without giving any hints that we might actually lose. This year, I have changed my expectations and that includes winning. That is what matters the most, doing whatever it takes to try to win a trophy. Winning isn't the end-all, be-all.

Another thing I do want to talk about before I jump into next week’s article is how we are going to change things and how we are going to make improvements. Again, this is very personal to me. After seeing how bad our season was at the start of this season, I decided to start practicing more and watch footage of games from previous years to give myself some perspective and be able to gauge whether we were headed in the right direction, yet again being in similar situations we experienced last year, and how we can improve upon to put ourselves in the mix and make that final push. For the second time in my life, I was in such a position where I didn't really want to be here anymore. Everything just feels surreal. Everyone knows that I don't care if we lose or win, nothing really matters. I just want to focus on trying to change myself and then move forward. Last year, I would've rather watched clips of past winners to compare and analyze the differences and why we were able to be winners when we didn't want to win. Even though some of our fans don't appreciate that we haven't shown up for anyone, that doesn't mean we shouldn't try and build on what we did last time around.

                    GET DISCOUNT

Last year, many of us were skeptical of coming to college because we didn't know anything. One thing we realized last year is knowing that this would take a lot of work to get used to. You need to get used to having a schedule and a practice schedule from Monday through Friday. Then you have to plan everything out and prepare for the actual game, which is a different animal altogether. Going into last week’s game, that’s where many of us were and unfortunately it paid off. We ended up beating Arizona 42–14 for a 19–14 record. But we should do better than we did. I believe we learned a lot playing on short days at 6 AM, but for that game we played against Cal in the afternoon where we had about 2 hours of daylight and were facing the Pac-12 champion. What we need to realize is that nobody wants to sit on the bench, and in order to win a championship, it requires both sides of the ball to be firing on all cylinders. While there's always room for improvement, we'll continue working on these aspects and try to get better every single day.