Mira Costa will also be counting on Van Graw’ foot in Friday’s game against Loyola. Photos by Rav Vidal
by Paul Teetor
The narrative line is as old
as the art of storytelling itself: a young understudy, a complete unknown, is called on at the last second with no hope of success and leaves the stage three hours later as a budding star.
This kind of inspirational story usually only happens in corny Hollywood musicals or pre-teen sports books about dreams coming true.
But this one really did happen.
His name is Jaxson Dart, and it’s hard to think of a more perfect name for an emerging star quarterback – unless you made up a name like Mickey Missile or Sammy Slinger. And then no one would believe it, anyway.
But Jaxson Dart is his real name, and it fits: this 6-foot-3 blond bomber throws darts that almost always find their target and get there in a hurry, on a straight line.
Now, with a record of 2-1 and 1-1 in the Pac-12, there is hope for the future of the previously hopeless USC football program.
What a difference one week can make.
Seven days after USC looked disorganized, dysfunctional and downright un-motivated in a sickening 42-28 home loss to Stanford – a loss that got Head Coach Clay Helton fired after eight years of up-and-down mediocrity – the Trojans went on the road and looked like a completely different team as they destroyed Washington State Saturday afternoon by a stunning score of 45-14.
The undisputed star of the game: the 18-year-old freshman quarterback who came in to save the game and possibly save the season after 3-year starter Kedon Slovis was knocked out with a head injury. At that point, Slovis was playing with his usual lack of accuracy and urgency and Dart completely turned around the trajectory of the game.
And if all this sounds slightly familiar to Trojan fans, it should. Their last great quarterback, Sam Darnold, also was promoted early in the season after the starter, Max Browne, proved that he simply didn’t have the goods to be the kind of star QB that Trojan fans had grown accustomed to over the last couple of decades: guys like Carson Palmer, Manhattan
Beach’s own Matt Leinart, Matt Barkley, etc.
And there was a certain delicious full-circle irony in watching Dart save the day after Slovis put the Trojans in a 14-0 hole early in the game. That’s because Slovis burst on the college football scene in much the same way three years ago.
J.T. Daniels had a good freshman season, not a great one, four years ago after arriving at USC with as much hype and fanfare as any quarterback in USC history. But in his sophomore year, in the season’s second game he suffered a bad knee injury that opened the door for the freshman Slovis, then an unknown three-star recruit, to come in and have a very good game followed by a promising season that gave everyone hope the glory days might soon be back.
That caused Daniels to leave USC and transfer to Georgia where he is now one of the top quarterbacks in the land. A whole lot of USC fans wish now that Daniels had never left after Slovis’ emergence.
Slovis regressed badly during the pandemic-shortened season last year and continued his downward spiral this season. Indeed, he was so off-target so often that many Trojan boosters – the guys who write the big checks that fund the crazy, astronomical salaries for coaches and administrators – were calling for Helton to give Dart, who looked spectacular during the pre-season practices, a shot at the job.
But Helton, forever stuck in his old ways and reluctant to try anything new or innovative, stuck with Slovis all the way.
His stubbornness and inability to motivate his players cost him his job. Assistant coach Donte Williams was handed the interim Head Coach job, which incidentally made him the first Black Head Coach in USC football history.
When Slovis went down Saturday afternoon, Williams didn’t hesitate to bring in Dart, who hadn’t played a single down in the first two games.
Sure enough, in his first couple of series, Dart played like a raw freshman. He threw an interception, got sacked a couple of times and lost a fumble.
“Things were going a little fast for me at the start,” Dart admitted after the game. “I felt like, you know, for me to succeed I had to just forget about it and just move on.”
And that’s exactly what he did.
In the last minute of the first half, he drove the Trojans down the field and got close enough for a field goal attempt. It looked like Williams was going to send the kicker onto the field, but star receiver Drake London beseeched Williams to let Dart go for it.
Williams changed his mind – exactly the kind of tactical flexibility and open-minded receptivity to player feed-back that Helton so badly lacked – and Dart rewarded his confidence by throwing a last-second 38-yard strike to Gary Bryant for a touchdown that cut the lead in half to 14-7 at halftime.
Like magic, everything turned around in the second half. The Trojan defense locked down the Cougar’s offense to the point where they didn’t record another first down until late in the fourth quarter. Meanwhile Dart stunned the Washington crowd by connecting on 31 of 47 passes and piling up 391 yards and four TD’s. That broke the first-game record of 282 yards set by Daniels in his first game.
But even more than the numbers, it was the way he did it that impressed everyone – especially his teammates. The team’s center, Brett Neilon, even dared to utter the D-word.
“He reminds me a lot of Sam Darnold,” Neilon said. “He’s got a swagger about him. He plays with a lot of heart.”
So who is this savior appearing out of nowhere to salvage the Trojan’s season ,and maybe even help Williams get named to the permanent Head Coach job, which is widely expected to go to a big-name outsider, not to a kid who grew up a few blocks from the Coliseum and always dreamed of coaching USC someday.
Dart was born and raised in Utah. In his senior season at Corner Canyon High School in Draper, Utah, he was so good – passing for 4,691 yards and 67 TD’s – that both Gatorade and MaxPreps named him the national Player of the Year. He was also an All State third baseman for his school’s baseball team.
Despite being heavily recruited by Arizona State, Dart had his heart set on USC and committed early. During the pre-season workouts he worked his way up to second on the QB depth chart behind Slovis, and was just waiting for his chance to shine.
Saturday he got that chance and took full advantage of it, shining like a raw, uncut diamond that just needs a little polishing to be worth a fortune.
After the game Williams was asked if his plan now is to give Slovis back the starting job or demote him and let Dart start. He gave an ambiguous answer that at least left the door open a crack for Dart.
“Every day, every position, of everybody on this team, it’s always a battle,” he said.
If he’s as smart as he appears to be after just one game in the head job, Williams will give Dart the first shot at the starting job next week against Oregon State at the Coliseum.
We already know USC isn’t going anywhere with Slovis running the show.
Let’s see where Dart can take them.
After the game, Dart went up into the stands for the traditional honor of leading the Trojan Marching Band with the school sword. As he tried to return to the field, dozens of USC fans who made the trip to Pullman asked to take a selfie with the young quarterback – and he was happy to oblige every last one of them.
A star was born on Saturday, September 18, 2021.
Mark the date.
A kid named Dart went from zero to hero in three hours.
Rams rolling
The Rams were lucky to win Sunday’s away game with the Indianapolis Colts. If Colts quarterback Carson Wentz hadn’t gotten injured late in the game, and been replaced by a rookie QB no one has ever heard of, they very well might have lost Sunday’s thriller.
Instead, they pulled out a 27-24 win that pushed them to a 2-0 start and set them up for a far bigger challenge next week. The defending Super Bowl champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the greatest quarterback of them all, Tom Brady, are coming to SoFi Stadium for a nationally televised showdown of 2-0 teams that could easily be a preview of the National Conference championship game next January.
And no, the Rams wouldn’t have won the Colts game last year. Quarterback Jared Goff would have found a way to turn the ball over – interception, fumble, sack, whatever – at the most crucial time of the game.
And Coach Sean McVay would have quietly seethed and vowed to get rid of Goff and his huge contract, somehow, some way, at the end of the season.
Which is exactly what he did last off-season, trading Goff and two first round draft choices for Matthew Stafford, a 12-year veteran with exactly zero playoff wins with the sad-sack Detroit Lions.
While he doesn’t have any playoff wins on his resume, Stafford is tied for eighth on the all-time list of quarterbacks leading their team on a fourth quarter comeback, having done it 38 times.
Actually, make that 39 times after Sunday’s inspiring win.
This is how clutch Stafford is, especially compared to Goff, who seemed to constantly find new ways to lose close games.
After setting his team up with a double digit lead, Stafford watched helplessly as the weakened Rams defense – sure, lineman Aaron Donald and defensive back Jalen Ramsey are both still great, but they lost a couple of rock-solid defenders this off-season in linebacker Michael Brockers and safety John Johnson – let the Colts storm their way back into the game behind a resurgent Wentz, who was run out of Philadelphia but on Sunday looked like the guy who helped lead the Eagles to the Super Bowl a couple of years ago.
Leading just 17-14, the Rams punting unit contributed to the team’s collapse when the ball was snapped the wrong way, hit a Ram, and fell to the turf where a Colts special teams player scooped it up for a gift touchdown.
Suddenly the Colts were leading 21-17 early in the fourth quarter and had all the momentum.
Stafford calmly came on the field and did his thing to perfection. He drove the Rams down the field and picked up a huge gain when he found wide receiver Cooper Kupp for 44-yards. Then, as if to demonstrate the great connection he has developed with Kupp in a short time, he finished off the drive with a 10-yard TD pass to Kupp to regain the lead, 24-21.
But Wentz is a pretty good QB too, and he got the Colts in position to kick a 35-yard field goal to tie the game 24-24 with 7 minutes left.
Naturally Stafford couldn’t let that stand, so on a crucial third-and-one play he hit Kupp in the left flat for three yards. It wasn’t much of a gain, but it was the key play in setting the Rams up for a 38-yard field goal by Matt Gay, who grabbed the lead back at 27-24, with two minutes to go.
Now Colts fans got an unpleasant surprise: Wentz was unable to come back in the game due to an injured ankle. That forced untested and untried rookie Jacob Eason, a fourth-round draft pick out of the University of Washington, to come in the game and try to salvage a victory. With the ball deep in the Colt’s own territory and little time left, Eason was forced to pass on every down.
After a couple of short connections, he tried to force a 25-yard pass down the right sideline, only to see Ramsey pick it off and set up a massive celebration on the Rams sideline
Still, McVay, Stafford, Kupp and the rest of the Rams know they will have to play much better against Brady and the Bucs than they did against the Colts if they want to keep their bandwagon rolling to a 3-0 record.
Bring on the Super Bowl champs!
Clippers break ground on their new house
It’s every renter’s dream: to own their own home, no matter how humble it may be.
It’s true of pauper and prince alike. Whether you’re a big tech multi-billionaire, or a fast-food hamburger flipper, you want your own place, somewhere you’re the boss and not at the mercy of some high-handed landlord.
So this week the Clippers, who have been the Lakers tenants and second-class citizens in the Staples Center since it opened in 2000, finally broke ground on the $ 1.8 billion Intuit Dome in Inglewood, which may very well become the center of the LA Sports when the 18,000-seat venue opens in time for the 2024-25 NBA season. At least that’s when it’s scheduled to open. Clippers owner Steve Ballmer could barely contain his excitement, much like any other new home owner as construction got underway. “This will be the singular best place for fans and players throughout the world,” he said.
Combined with the $5.5 billion SoFi Stadium – which houses both the Rams and the Chargers — just a few blocks away, the center of gravity of LA pro sports will take a decided southward shift and leave the downtown venue of LA Live feeling like an orphan.
According to Ballmer, the new basketball palace will feature a double-sided, oval shaped scoreboard with 44,000 feet of LED lighting, which is almost seven times larger than any other NBA scoreboard.
Of particular interest to LA’s high-rollers, there will be “court-side cabanas” modeled after field-level suites at NFL palaces like SoFi Stadium.
When a guy who is worth $96 billion — according to Forbes Magazine — decides to build his own customized crib, that’s a place you want to visit when it’s ready.
See you in three years.
Mira Costa Back on track, Redondo not yet.
It’s been a rough year for both Beach City football teams, but compared to Redondo, Mira Costa at least has a couple of wins to its credit with a 2-2 record. Redondo, which had been outscored 99-6 in its first three games on two field goals, finally scored some touchdowns this week but still fell to Paraclete of Lancaster by a score of 43-20.
Costa, riding the hot right arm of senior quarterback Casey Pavlick, trounced West Torrance 40-14, and showed no hangover from their devastating 28-27 loss to Paraclete last weekend.
But the Mustangs are facing a much tougher challenge Friday night when they host Loyola, the school that has attracted so many Manhattan Beach athletes away from Mira Costa over the last couple of decades. While excitement is building over the backyard brawl that is expected and hoped for, the reality may be much different. Loyola is currently ranked 17th in the LA Times listing of the top 25 teams in the Southland, while not a single Bay League team has been ranked all year. A Costa victory would be a major upset, but with Pavlick’s strong right arm at the wheel, anything can happen Friday night.
Contact: teetor.paul@gmail.com. Follow @paulteetor. ER
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