Loyal understudy Miller Moss gets his star turn for USC

SAN DIEGO — It is one of sport’s hoariest and lamest cliches, usually applied as a rationalization for one’s own lack of effort: “The other team wanted it more.”

It is an empty sentence, that is, until bowl season. Then there’s some meaning to it, although maybe the phrasing should be flipped: “More of them wanted it.”

The way things have evolved in college football, thanks to the combination of the transfer portal and NFL-worthy players declining to risk injury, the rosters for any non-playoff bowl game have become a mixed bag. (Even a participating playoff team, Texas, had backup quarterback Maalik Murphy enter the portal at the end of this season. Two days before Christmas, Murphy announced he was transferring to Duke.)

But what was it Lincoln Riley said about wanting to commit to guys who had a burning desire to be USC Trojans? It was obvious that the ones who wanted to be there were there Wednesday night in the Trojans’ 42-28 Holiday Bowl victory over 15th-ranked Louisville.

And the hero was a guy who was willing to stay and wait his turn. That is almost unheard of in modern college football.

Miller Moss hung in there over three seasons, playing in 11 games but basically serving as the loyal understudy to Kedon Slovis his first year, and then Caleb Williams the last two. He got his star turn, finally, at Petco Park and delivered a performance for the ages: Six touchdown passes, records for both the Holiday Bowl and for a USC quarterback making his first career start. He threw for 372 yards, completed 23 of 33 passes and made only one glaring mistake, an interception in the red zone early in the third quarter that Louisville’s Quincy Riley caught at his own goal line and returned to the USC 39, setting up a touchdown that narrowed the Trojans’ lead to 28-21.

Not to worry. Moss had two more touchdown passes left in him. He was cool, he was poised, and his unit followed his lead.

“He was awesome,” Riley said, expressing mild surprise that it took four questions into the post-game news conference before anyone asked if Moss had solidified the starting spot for next season with his performance in this game. “Shoot, he may have scared off anybody that would want to come here anyway.

“I’m not a bit surprised how he played. He did what he’s been doing in practice every day, especially the second half of this year. I knew he was confident going in, and to see him respond and make some of the throws he made, he was dialed into the game plan and he trusted his guys. Obviously, a lot of the guys around him played very well and made plays, but he obviously led the charge.”

But this goes beyond the numbers or the highlight clips, or even Moss himself.

This was, in essence, about players who wanted to be Trojans taking ownership of the situation and doing something about it. It’s the opposite of what seemed at times to be a purely mercenary atmosphere around the Trojan program during Riley’s two seasons, when he brought guys in from here, there and everywhere and expected them to cohere.

“Twenty-plus guys didn’t play this game for different reasons,” Riley said afterward. “We could have come into this game not caring about it. This team could have gone a lot of different ways with it. … This is significant for the guys that have been here in the beginning of this journey, and there’s been a lot of great moments in the first two years. Now, they’re going to get a lot better and it’s going to get a lot more fun as we go, but it had to start somewhere, and a lot of the guys in the locker room were a part of that.

“It was important to them because the team was important to them, because USC was important to them.”

This could have been the bowl equivalent of a trap game, for a team that started the season with national championship aspirations but wound up losing five of its final six games in the regular season and was embarrassed in three of those losses.

Instead, the Trojans finished 8-5 and with the taste of victory, and while any coach who wins a non-playoff bowl game will talk about it as a building block for the future, maybe this truly is a beginning from the standpoint of a new attitude, a new emphasis on loyalty and commitment and all of those things that tend to be chucked aside at the entrance to the portal.

The back-and-forth nature of this game was the antithesis of what often happens this time of year, when the team that considers the bowl bid a privilege will outplay the one that considers it a chore. (For an example, see Tulane’s 46-45 comeback win against USC in the Cotton Bowl last year.)

And the Trojans had plenty of reason to mail it in – 20 of the 60 players listed on their depth chart bailed on this game, and Connor Morissette of USCFootball.com estimated that the Trojans had 53 scholarship players suiting up Wednesday night.

Then again, some of those who chose not to play were on the sideline anyway to cheer on their teammates, and the most prominent of them – Caleb Williams, the one expected to hear his name called earliest in the NFL draft this spring – gave Moss a huge hug when it was over.

Final in the Holiday Bowl: USC 42, Louisville 28. An emotional Miller Moss hugs Caleb Williams postgame after a six-TD performance.

Williams: “F— yeah, man!!” pic.twitter.com/rEiJ5qJv6d

— Luca Evans (@bylucaevans) December 28, 2023

Moss might be the outlier among his peers, but staying in one place and waiting his turn – through the final year of the Clay Helton era and two years with Riley and Williams – might yet pay dividends.