LOS ANGELES — University of Southern California quarterback Caleb Williams is the AP college football player of the year, becoming the school’s first winner of the award since 2005 with his stellar debut season for the Trojans.
Williams received 32 of the 46 first-place votes and 117 total points from AP Top 25 poll voters. The Heisman Trophy favorite finished well ahead of TCU quarterback Max Duggan, who came in second with six first-place votes and 64 points.
Ohio State quarterback C.J. Stroud was third, with Tennessee’s Hendon Hooker fourth and Georgia’s Stetson Bennett fifth.
Alabama linebacker Will Anderson Jr., the first back-to-back winner of defensive player of the year in the Southeastern Conference, was the only player in this year’s top eight vote recipients who was not a quarterback, with the Crimson Tide standout finishing sixth after coming in fourth last season.
Hooker and Stroud got two first-place votes apiece, while one first-place vote each went to Bennett, Anderson and star running backs Bijan Robinson of Texas and Blake Corum of Michigan. Alabama quarterback Bryce Young, who won the AP award last season along with the Heisman, was 11th this year.
Bennett, Duggan, Stroud and Williams are the finalists for this year’s Heisman, which will be presented Saturday night in New York. The winner of the AP award has differed from the Heisman winner just twice in the past two decades.
Later Thursday, during the college football awards show on ESPN, Williams also won the Maxwell Award as the most outstanding player in college football, but Duggan beat out Williams for the Davey O’Brien Award as the nation’s top quarterback.
Anderson won the Lombardi Award as college football’s best lineman, and he also received the Bronko Nagurski Trophy as the nation’s best defensive player for the second straight year. Meanwhile, Robinson won the Doak Walker Award as the nation’s top running back.
In other awards handed out Thursday night:
— Tennessee’s Jalin Hyatt won the Biletnikoff Award as the nation’s top receiver;
— TCU’s Tre’Vius Hodges-Tomlinson won the Jim Thorpe Award as the best defensive back;
— Michigan’s Olusegun Oluwatimi won the Outland Trophy as the top interior lineman;
— North Carolina State’s Christopher Dunn won the Lou Groza Award as the best kicker;
— Rutgers’ Adam Korsak won the Ray Guy Award as the top punter;
— North Carolina receiver Tylee Craft won the Disney Spirit Award;
— Florida State offensive lineman Dillan Gibbons won the Wuerffel Trophy for community service.
In honors announced before Thursday, Bennett won the Burlsworth Trophy as the top player whose career started as a walk-on, teammate Brock Bowers won the Mackey Award as the best tight end, and Michigan’s Oluwatimi won the Rimington Trophy as the best center.
The clear favorite for the AP honor was Williams, the elusive passer and runner with an electrifying arm and strong leadership skills. The sophomore followed coach Lincoln Riley from Oklahoma to the West Coast last winter, and the former Sooners duo immediately returned USC to national prominence, with the Trojans’ 11-2 record a seven-win improvement over last season.
Williams has thrown for 4,075 yards and leads the Football Bowl Subdivision with 37 touchdown passes this season, when he has been picked off just four times while completing 66.1% of his passes. He was named the Pac-12’s offensive player of the year award and won the Walter Camp honor for national player of the year.
His ability to avoid defensive pressure has bordered on the supernatural at times, and he has racked up 372 rushing yards and 10 touchdowns while setting the USC records for total touchdowns and total offensive yards (4,447) in a season.
“I think he’s just elegant in the way he plays the game,” USC receiver Kyle Ford said. “That’s the only word to describe it. He’s out there and he’s in the backfield, zigzagging around and doing spin moves, and he doesn’t get touched and has a first down, and he’s out of bounds. Stuff like that is amazing to me, stuff that he pulls off during a game. He’s a gamer, and he’s a winner.”
Perhaps most impressive, Williams has played a critical role in bringing cohesion, teamwork and double-digit victories to a program returning from a four-win season with a new coaching staff and more than two dozen veteran player additions through the NCAA transfer portal.
Although he usually deflects questions about his own play by praising his teammates, Williams admits leadership “means everything” to him.
“I’ve been trying to lead more,” he said. “Being in a position where you can go and do something bigger, or do something that you’ve always dreamed of as a child, it brings that understanding that the time is right now.”
From his first weeks in Los Angeles, Williams welcomed the responsibility of organizing and motivating this group of new teammates. He swiftly cemented friendships across the roster with his charisma and upbeat personality.
“Talk about a dude you can count on for anything,” left guard Andrew Vorhees said. “A guy who genuinely cares, is supportive in every way, really tries to be a guy that brings people together. It’s a brotherhood to him.”
Williams put up one spectacular game after another down the stretch of the regular season, capped by rivalry victories over UCLA and Notre Dame. Although the Trojans missed out on the College Football Playoff after losing the Pac-12 title game to Utah last Friday as Williams hobbled through the matchup with a hamstring injury, No. 8 USC will finish its turnaround season in the Cotton Bowl against Tulane.
Williams is the third winner of the AP award in six years for Riley, who also coached Oklahoma quarterbacks Baker Mayfield (2017) and Kyler Murray (2018) to Heisman trophies in the same years.
USC is enjoying its best season since Pete Carroll’s tenure as head coach from 2001-09, and the Trojans now have their first AP honoree since those glory days. Quarterback Matt Leinart won the award in 2004, and tailback Reggie Bush received it the next year.
Both went on to win the Heisman, and Williams is favored to win USC’s record eighth as the school’s first finalist since 2005.