Otton Has USC Job All to Himself Now, and He Clearly Expects to Have Fun With It : The One And Only

Brad Otton decided he was having fun about halfway through the third quarter of the USC-Northwestern Rose Bowl game Jan. 1.

And for Otton, fun is the key component in his love of playing the game.

Looking back at the 41-32 victory over Northwestern, Otton said the game turned for him on its best-remembered play, his 56-yard touchdown pass to Keyshawn Johnson. It gave USC a 31-19 lead, and Otton headed for the bench.

The 6-foot-6, 225-pound senior from Tumwater, Wash., lifted his gaze to where thousands of USC partisans stood and cheered.

“It hit me right then,” he said. “I thought: ‘Hey, this is the Rose Bowl.’ In all the work and preparation for the game, and all the other games that season, I’d kind of lost sight of what it was we were doing and why I love playing this game.

“It hit me that I was really having fun. And when I’m having fun out there, I’m a better player.”

Otton expects to have a lot of fun this year. For the first time at USC, he is the unchallenged leader of John Robinson’s offense. Kyle Wachholtz, with whom he shared the position last season, is a Green Bay Packer rookie.

Robinson and offensive coordinator Mike Riley employed a two-quarterback offense, usually playing Otton the first and third quarters, Wachholtz the other two. Otton finished with better statistics, completing 159 of 256 passes for 1,923 yards with four interceptions and 14 touchdowns while Wachholtz was 105 for 171 for 1,231 yards with three interceptions and 11 touchdowns. More importantly, Otton jump-started the offense in the Rose Bowl and Wachholtz, in what would have been his final college appearance, never got into the game.

Last year, he and Wachholtz said all the right things for the sake of team harmony. But one thing the situation was not, he says, was fun.

“I didn’t handle the situation well last year,” he said. “Kyle wasn’t real happy about it either. One time I looked at him and said: ‘How did we both wind up at the same school?’

“The problem was, we were both under great pressure. I felt pressure on every play, every pass, that the play had to work. I felt like I had to complete every pass or in Kyle would come.

“Until the Rose Bowl, I was never into a rhythm in a game. I was never relaxed, even in the huddles where I sometimes crack a joke to keep everyone loose. And I don’t think I grew much as a quarterback.”

At one point, he said, he nearly made an issue of it with Robinson and Riley.

“I felt last summer I’d had a really good camp, so I was disappointed to begin with that they were sticking to the two-QB plan,” he said. “[Robinson] said we’d share it the first two games, then they’d take another look at it. Well, I had a good game against Arizona and he stuck with the rotation, so I was really unhappy.

“I called my Dad [Sid Otton, a high school coach in Tumwater, for whom Otton played], and he encouraged me to make sure the coaches knew I wasn’t happy. I almost made an issue of it, but I didn’t. I finally accepted what they were trying to do, and so did Kyle.”

Robinson and Riley maintain they made the right call. Robinson even said the two-quarterback offense “saved our season,” referring to the fact that battle-ready Wachholtz won two games when Otton was hurt, the Stanford game and the Pac-10 clincher at Oregon State.

But Otton says that because the job is his alone, there will be no worrying, no pressure.

“Knowing the job is mine, I’m not even worrying about how I’m going to play against Penn State,” he said of Sunday’s Kickoff Classic at East Rutherford, N.J. “My focus is getting the offense playing together, getting us off to a fast start and staying fast, making sure I’m looking at all my receivers.”

He’ll have to do without Johnson.

“You know, we depended a lot on Keyshawn last year,” Otton said. “There were a lot of plays last year when my focus was to stay alive until Key got open. Now, with all this depth at wide receiver, we’re going to be very effective.”

Johnson, the NFL’s No. 1 draft pick by the New York Jets, finished his two-year USC career with 168 catches and 2,796 yards, second only to Johnnie Morton’s 201 catches and 3,201 yards in four seasons.

But Otton has many targets. On one side, some are calling sophomore Billy Miller Johnson’s heir apparent. On the other side there’s Johnson’s cousin, Chris Miller, and two impressive freshmen, R. Jay Soward and Stan Guyness.

Probably most impressive in camp, however, has been Mike Bastianelli, a sophomore who caught only one pass last year. Larry Parker, who caught 25 passes last year, is also back but is sidelined because of a hamstring pull.

Then there’s tight end John Allred, who, like Otton, has his position secured at last. He shared it with Johnny McWilliams for two years.

“I’ll be looking at a lot of guys this year, and that’s great,” Otton said.

At 24, Otton is the team’s oldest player. A Mormon, he took his two-year mission in Italy before entering Weber State. Last May, he was married at the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City. He lives with his wife, Deanna, in a Studio City apartment.

Otton fell out of the Big Sky onto the USC campus in the spring of 1994. He had been a freshman starter at Weber State but looked for the escape hatch when the administration talked about dropping football.

Otton and his father talked to Brigham Young, Montana, Idaho, Washington State, Fresno State and USC. He decided on Washington State, but when quarterbacks there threatened a revolt, Otton looked next to USC.

He was first Rob Johnson’s backup, then a co-quarterback last year. Along the way, he set a Pac-10 record with 216 attempts without an interception. He also bagged the NCAA record of 202, which doesn’t include bowl games.

He’s the tallest quarterback ever at USC, and maybe the slowest, a tag at which he bristles.

“I know I’m not the fastest guy on the team, but let me ask you this,” he said. “How many times have you seen anyone take me down from behind?”

To Robinson, Otton’s principal assets are great concentration and a special vision.

“A guy could be tearing off his ear, and he’d still complete the pass,” Robinson said. “He has the ability to look at each of his receivers, no matter what kind of rush he’s getting. Some quarterbacks, when they take their eyes off the receivers and look at the rush, the play’s over. Not with Brad, he never stops looking.

“Speed-wise, he can’t run from here to the bathroom. But he’ll give you that step, or just a lean . . . and he’ll get the throw off.”

That’s the way it was last Jan. 1, Otton, standing tall and resolute, in violent swirls of purple, getting buffeted about, but keeping USC drives alive all afternoon, completing 29 of 44 passes for 391 yards and two touchdowns.

But Otton says he has had better games, implying even better games are yet to come.

As a freshman at Weber State, he had a 536-yard game against Northern Arizona. And he says his 15-for-20 night in the 61-0 blowout of Cal in 1994 ranks with his Rose Bowl game.

But for Tumwater High Coach Sid Otton, Jan. 1 was good enough.

Asked afterward to evaluate his son’s Rose Bowl effort, he said: “I think I’ll keep him.”