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Wednesday, January 4, 2006
Leinart makes USC tick
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Pasadena, Calif. — Southern Cal entered the Rose Bowl having lost one game in three seasons, that on Sept. 27, 2003, against California in overtime. The next week the Trojans were in trouble again. USC was trailing Arizona State at the half, and Matt Leinart, then in his first season as starting quarterback, was hurting.
Here Pete Carroll, Southern Cal’s coach, takes up the tale: “The way it was set up in that locker room, Matt was sitting on a training table out in the hallway… . We’re trying to get jacked up for the second half and trying to get going, not knowing what his status was, and every guy on the team had to walk by Matt in the little tunnel there, and he was looking bad. His head was hanging. He had ice on his knee and ice on his ankle. He looked horrible.
“I’m always the last guy out of the locker room, so I got a chance to walk by him. I called him every name in the book. I challenged him, ‘You no-good so-and-so, you let these guys down” — everything I could think of. As I walked away, I kind of chuckled, ‘I took a shot at him there.’ I figured it was my last shot because we needed him to play so I tried to challenge him.
“I felt kind of bad that I would challenge a little kid like that at a time like that. As we got back on the field and we were warming up [third-stringer] Brandon Hanson and I was standing with [quarterbacks coach] Steve Sarkisian and we had already played [backup Matt] Castle in the first half and he had struggled through it. I looked over Sark’s shoulder, and coming out of the tunnel after everybody was out on the field warming up, here comes Matt. He’s hobbling and looking like he had been torn up, and I said, ‘Look at that, Sark. What are we going to do?’
“He looked at me and he looked at Matt, and he said, ‘Shoot, let’s go with him.’
“It was throwing care to the wind. He didn’t look like he could even play. He came out and lit it up and he put up about 250 [passing yards] and we ran the ball like crazy and he brought us back. It was one of those defining moments — that he was for real and he was a great competitor and he was going to overcome the odds. It was a historic moment and the players realized it and the coaches knew it, and we haven’t lost since.”
Matt Leinart didn’t win the 2005 Heisman Trophy — teammate Reggie Bush did — but there’s no question that the quarterback, who did win the 2004 Heisman, is the key figure in the greatest run contemporary college football has seen. It was Leinart who changed the fourth-down play at the line and found Dwayne Jarrett down the left sideline at Notre Dame, the biggest single play of the 34 consecutive victories. It was Leinart (with an illegal but unflagged push from Bush) who scored the winning touchdown that day.
Southern Cal has vast quantities of talent, but it took Leinart to pull all the tangents together. Reggie Bush is the greatest collegiate back since Herschel Walker and LenDale White is the greatest second-best back since Doc Blanchard, but nothing in neo-football works without a big-time quarterback to make the requisite throws. Matt Leinart is the best collegiate quarterback since … who? Charlie Ward? Jim Plunkett? Roger Staubach?
Being a handsome and famous young man based in L.A., Leinart has been seen making the celebrity circuit — acquaintances include Jessica Simpson and her estranged husband Nick Lachey — but there’s substance galore behind the sleek exterior. Had a battered Leinart not answered Carroll’s impassioned call that day in 2003, Southern Cal would still have become a superb team. But it wouldn’t have become what it did.
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Shockley’s greatest victory at UGA
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
The best thing about D.J. Shockley’s stay at the University of Georgia had nothing to do with what he did with his legs and his arm as a quarterback.
It had everything to do with what he did with his mind and his drive as a student.
Just ask his parents.
“He’s proven during his one year as a starter at Georgia that he can throw the football, and he’s proven that he’s an intelligent quarterback, but I’ll tell you our proudest moment,� said Don Shockley, the father, smiling as he nodded toward Tanya Shockley, the mother, from his seat on Monday night at the Georgia Dome during the Sugar Bowl.
Tanya Shockley interrupted her husband to say, “December 17th.�
That’s the day D.J. graduated from UGA with a degree in speech communications. Not only that, D.J. sees graduate school in his future. So all of that football stuff is secondary to the guy who just led the SEC in passing efficiency.
For instance: In order for D.J. to impress NFL scouts after sitting behind David Greene for all of those years before getting a chance to start, he has to do well at the NFL combine and during his Senior Bowl workouts.
Don Shockley shrugged, before adding with another smile, “He’s put himself in a position right now, whereas regardless of what happens in the pros, he can go out in this world and take care of himself. He’s already got several job interviews.�
Jan Kemp would be proud. Not because of what UGA did for Shockley, but because of what Shockley did for himself.
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