No. 4 USC beat Texas in a thriller on Saturday night in Los Angeles that took two overtimes to complete. The final score was 27-24, Trojans.
USC survives Texas in an ‘06 Rose Bowl rematch that tried like hell to be just as good
The Trojans won one of the games of the season so far.
The final play was a 43-yard USC field goal by Chase McGrath, but the decisive one was a USC strip-fumble of Texas freshman QB Sam Ehlinger as he tried to sneak for a touchdown in double-OT:
USC got the ball at Texas’ 25 from there, per college football’s overtime rules. The Trojans didn’t mess up, and their points officially staved off the upset.
Texas went ahead in the final minute of regulation, after trailing for most of the night. The key moment there: a 16-yard Ehlinger touchdown pass to Armanti Foreman with 46 seconds left, capping an incredible drive and making it 17-14, Longhorns.
But USC immediately answered, driving deep into Texas territory. McGrath kicked a 31-yard field goal to tie the game and send it to overtime. There, the teams traded first-OT touchdowns. Texas declined to try a game-winning (or game-losing) two-point conversion after answering USC’s OT-opening score.
This was the schools’ first rematch since the 2006 Rose Bowl, the best college football championship game ever played.
Texas won that night on a fourth-and-5 scramble for a touchdown by quarterback Vince Young, who became a college legend as a result of his 467-yard performance that night in Pasadena. The QB who played opposite him, USC’s Matt Leinart, believes it’s the best college football game ever, of any kind. (Fans we polled earlier this year said it’s the second-best of this millennium.)
This game isn’t that game, and no game ever could be. It was turnover-riddled and offensively sloppy, and it didn’t have anything close to the stakes of a title-game Rose Bowl. USC opened as a 14-point favorite, and that line had grown to 17 by kickoff. But the game was close all the way through, as Texas used takeaways (including a series of fourth-down stops) to keep the Trojans within spitting distance.
USC led 7-0 late in the second half, but the Trojans threw a confounding pick-six to Texas defensive back DeShon Elliott in the last half-minute. Even more odd, Texas somehow let USC score a 56-yard touchdown on the last play of the half, letting the Trojans into the locker room with the same touchdown lead they’d already lined up.
Texas blew a golden opportunity to take the lead a few minutes into the fourth quarter, when they got to USC’s 13-yard line trailing by four points. Freshman quarterback Sam Ehlinger threw a confounding pick to USC’s Marvin Tell III. That cost the Longhorns valuable field position, though their defense held on the other end.
When the Longhorns got the ball back, still down four, there were five minutes left and 91 yards separating them from the touchdown they needed to win. (There’d be no tying the game, because you can’t score four points on a possession.) Ehlinger made a couple of circus plays, including a 4-yard scramble on a third-and-5 that set up a fourth-down conversion on a QB keeper on the next play.
The play that set up the end-of-regulation drama up above? A 47-yard throw from Ehlinger to Collin Johnson, which got the Horns to USC’s 28. That set up another fourth-down conversion on a bullet from Ehlinger to Foreman, which set up Foreman’s TD. That seemed suspenseful as hell, but it turned out things only got deeper.
The rematch wasn’t as good as the ‘06 Rose Bowl, but it sure did its best.
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