These UCLA-USC rivals began the season as benchwarmers. Now they’re both starting quarterbacks
Before his improbable season began, back when he was a mere backup, USC quarterback Sam Darnold relaxed one day after a players-only practice and spoke about loyalty.
Darnold had grown up a USC fan. He’d watched Pete Carroll’s teams win national championships, “and I knew that I wanted to be part of that,” Darnold said. “And I felt like I could.”
Fourteen miles along I-10 and up I-405, before his own unlikely season began, UCLA quarterback Mike Fafaul was advised by his father to hit the road.
“I wanted him to transfer,” Mike Fafaul Sr. said. “He said, ‘No, I want to stay with my team.’ He loves UCLA and being a Bruin and wanted to help the team out and be part of it all.”
At the time, not much united the two benchwarming quarterbacks except for faith that they were already where they belonged. At UCLA, Josh Rosen, the former No. 1 quarterback recruit and a Heisman hopeful, was firmly ensconced as the starter and the face of the program. Many casual Bruins fans didn’t even know Fafaul’s name.
As for Darnold, he’d had little reason to commit to USC other than an unwavering trust in his own ability. Max Browne, another former No. 1 quarterback recruit, was being groomed as the quarterback in waiting. Ricky Town was next in succession. And Cody Kessler started above all of them. Darnold was the fourth man in a winner-take-all contest. It did not bother him.
“I figured, you know, I was going to compete wherever I went,” Darnold had said, not long before he’d lose the starting role to Browne out of training camp.
This season’s renewal of the USC-UCLA rivalry will serve as a testament to patience. The two starting quarterbacks both began the season on the bench. Their stories have diverged from there: Darnold became a savior who has taken down the Pac-12 Conference’s best quarterbacks in head-to-head competition; Fafaul is the leader of an outgunned offense saddled with an anemic running game.
But the two share a makeup that led them to their position today: patient, quiet and confident.
Both quarterbacks were initially overlooked in the recruitment process, though to different degrees. Fafaul, who will turn 24 later this month, was much more of a longshot.
He had talent, but he’d lagged behind as a recruit. In high school in Towson, Md., he didn’t start until he was a senior. He’d also played baseball, which interfered with summer recruiting camps. But when he took a prep season at Fork Union Military Academy in Fork Union, Va., his coach, John Shuman, found he was reliable and could pick up the offense quickly. Fafaul moved from third-stringer to starter during the season, leaping over Cardale Jones, who’d go on to lead Ohio State to a national title.
“He was just a good competitor and was attentive,” Shuman said. “When you do a one-year deal at a prep school, you have to put guys out there who can move your offense, and he could get it moving.”
Darnold was a more serious prospect. But his recruitment was muted compared to other touted quarterbacks, partially because a foot injury sidelined him for most of his junior season at San Clemente High, and partly because Darnold was also a reluctant participant in showcase camps.
“He doesn’t like promoting himself,” his father, Mike Darnold, said. “He doesn’t like talking about himself.”
When each arrived in college, neither made much of a splash. But they toiled quietly.
Fafaul, a walk-on, was relegated the seventh string, several rungs below even the scout team.
“It was extremely hard,” he said. “I was the only walk-on quarterback, and then we got more as the season went on, and it was really tough.”
Darnold’s talent propelled him more quickly. He redshirted last season and became a scout team legend.
“I just remember guys talking about it,” USC offensive coordinator Tee Martin has said. “It was locker-room talk as coaches. ‘Man, you see what Sam did? This guy’s going to be really good.’ ”
Darnold himself often said little. Stoicism is a trait both quarterbacks share. Darnold is confident but soft-spoken. USC Coach Clay Helton couldn’t remember a time when he saw his quarterback nervous.
Mike Darnold, too, had a hard time recalling such an instance.
“Maybe for a midterm?” he said.
Fafaul displayed a similar fearlessness. In his second start, a shootout against Utah, he threw 70 times, smashing the UCLA record. He passed so often that he iced his arm after the game and had it massaged as though he’d just pitched a baseball game.
His mother’s family is Lithuanian, and his grandmother was friends with another Lithuanian football player from Maryland, Johnny Unitas.
“He’s got his mother’s cool side,” Mike Fafaul Sr. said. “He’s like Johnny U. You never get rattled, you keep on coming.”
Since their common beginnings, Darnold and Fafaul have launched on different trajectories. In his last collegiate season, Fafaul has slogged through a bruising stretch of games. He has completed 108 of 198 passes with nine touchdowns and 10 interceptions, though he has been even more of a focal point for the Bruins than Darnold has for USC. Fafaul has attempted 46.5 passes per game as a starter. Darnold hasn’t matched that total in any one game.
Darnold, who has benefited from a more balanced attack, has driven USC’s resurgence. He has thrown for 2,161 yards with 22 touchdowns and six interceptions. Last week, he outdueled Washington’s Jake Browning, a Heisman Trophy contender.
But this rivalry has had an evening effect at times.
UCLA’s John Barnes, a walk-on who once wore a suit to meet with coach Terry Donahue to get a tryout, engineered a 14-point comeback for the Bruins in a 1992 win. Troy Aikman, a future Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee, could hardly sleep for two weeks after his off day cost the Bruins a loss to the Trojans in 1987.
Other times, quarterbacks like Matt Leinart or Todd Marinovich have been overwhelming. The story for Darnold and Fafaul is still to be told, though it is a good bet neither will be discouraged by a slow start. .
Time staff writer Ben Bolch contributed to this report.
Follow Zach Helfand on Twitter @zhelfand
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