The USC Trojans played their annual spring game this weekend, but any fan expecting to see star quarterback Caleb Williams play for an extended period of time was undoubtedly disappointed.
Caleb Williams played just one series in Saturday’s spring scrimmage before he was pulled by head coach Lincoln Riley. The reason, according to Riley, was simply that he didn’t feel Williams needed the reps.
“He’s played a lot of football,” Riley said after the spring game according to On3. “You come into a deal like this, my job is to look at it of what can we get the most out of today. I don’t know that playing two or three more series is going to change anything for Caleb in September, October, November right now.”
Riley decided instead to give the reps to younger players.
“For a guy like Miller Moss, who hasn’t had a lot of live-game snaps, these are invaluable. For a guy like Malachi Nelson or Jake Jensen, this is kind of the first time to really do it. Malachi especially being a true freshman. These snaps are way way more valuable to those guys than maybe somebody that’s played the amount of ball that Caleb has. He had a good first series. We knew coming in that was kind of the thought. We were gonna probably play him one series and let the other guys get the rest of the game.”
While the decision certainly makes sense, spring games are some of the few times families can affordably see their favorite college football teams. And there were certainly some young fans who went to Saturday’s game hoping to watch Williams play and left disappointed.
[On3]
