McCutcheon Is Now Trying to Turn the Corner

Daylon McCutcheon didn’t ask for it, but he has gotten it. Attention, hype, pub, call it what you will.

He and Brian Kelly were supposed to be a killer USC cornerback tandem and McCutcheon was probably on his way to the NFL after this, his junior year. He was on the cover of the Sporting News college football yearbook, right there beside UCLA’s Skip Hicks. He was the kid with the famous father. Everybody’s All-American.

Now will he even be All-Pac-10?

“He’s been humbled,” said Dennis Thurman, the former NFL safety who coaches USC’s secondary. “We’ve talked about it. Not that he hasn’t always been humble, but he has been humbled this year. It’s something to try to live up to all that has been placed on him. I don’t think he could ever live up to all the hype that’s been put on him.”

Only a year ago, McCutcheon was the cornerback who was hardly ever challenged. Teams seemed to fear him, and quarterbacks threw to the other side of the field.

This season, he has learned what it means to be burned. To see the ball in the air, see it caught for a touchdown, and then do all that’s left to do--turn and walk away.

“I feel I’ve played all right. I don’t feel I’ve had a great season,” McCutcheon said. “The plays where I feel like, ‘Man, I should have made that play,’ . . . you’ve got to move on. The next one, you have to fight even harder.

“That’s what competing’s all about. You’d hate it if teams came out and never threw and just ran the ball. You want to make plays, and you want them to throw the ball.”

It hasn’t been that long since the plays McCutcheon made were with the ball in his hands, as a dazzling running back at La Puente Bishop Amat.

Even though he moonlights as a receiver more and more now as the Trojans have struggled to a 4-4 record--he played close to a dozen downs against Washington and caught two passes for 30 yards--the Trojans have never seen what McCutcheon, the son of former Ram running back Lawrence McCutcheon, could have done at tailback.

After rushing for 2,456 yards as a senior at Bishop Amat in 1994 and scoring 33 touchdowns--10 of them on runs of 50 yards or more--McCutcheon picked cornerback as his college position, the better to position himself for a long NFL career. He says he has never looked back.

“In high school, when he was playing offense, what he did was next to unbelievable,” Thurman said. “There was just a naturalness about what he was able to do with the football under his arm. I don’t think he had to practice it or work hard at it.

“Yet at the position he’s undertaken, corner, it can be very humbling. Even the best people who have ever played it, like Deion Sanders, know it’s very demanding. It can take away your ability to believe in yourself at times. There’s never been a cornerback who hasn’t gotten beaten for a touchdown in front of everybody.”

When he played defense in high school, McCutcheon was a safety, not a cornerback, and Thurman says that put him several years behind in learning to become a great corner--a process Thurman says takes so long that by the time a player understands how to play corner, he’s too old to do it.

It is Kelly, not McCutcheon, who has been USC’s standout. He has broken up 13 passes and intercepted two more.

McCutcheon has been credited with five break-ups, and got his only interception against Florida State in the first game of the season.

“It gets frustrating,” said McCutcheon, who as a sophomore had three interceptions, 14 deflections and two forced fumbles. “But my coach [Thurman] tells me you can’t get frustrated. You’ve got to keep competing. Do things right, and the ball is going to end up in your hands.”

McCutcheon and Kelly have been more exposed this season because USC is playing up to 75% man-to-man pass defense. A year ago, they played maybe 50%, and his freshman year, mostly zone.

“They catch one ball, and all of a sudden people say you’re horrible, like they’re not supposed to catch any balls,” McCutcheon said. “That’s ridiculous.

“Cornerback is just one of those positions. Most of the time I feel better if my name is not mentioned. You turn on ESPN, and the only time you see the cornerback is when the ball is getting thrown over his head.”

With Kelly at the other corner, after moving over from free safety, it’s no longer easy to stay away from McCutcheon. Gradually this season, teams have decided to go right at him--Arizona State, Oregon, Washington, even Nevada Las Vegas.

“There are great receivers everywhere,” Thurman said. “When the ball’s in the air and a guy’s running a route, he has an opportunity to succeed--and you have an opportunity to fail.

“When they’re not challenging you, and you allow yourself to believe it’s because of you--I’m talking about any cornerback--you stop working on things. Then at some point, somebody says, ‘Well, let’s see what he’s made of.’ ”

McCutcheon expects it now.

“When you get the publicity--everyone wants to beat the best,” he said. “If I went to the NFL, I’d want to play against Jerry Rice. For myself, I’ve had a lot of publicity, and I understand that when they come out and play us, they want to beat me.”

Has McCutcheon regressed this season? Thurman says no.

“I think he’s better now than a year ago, but if you’re asking me does he have work to do, yes.”

USC, of course, would like to have McCutcheon back for his senior year, a question McCutcheon has yet to answer.

“I’ve thought about it,” he said. “Honestly, I think other people thought about it after last year a lot more than I did.

On one hand, McCutcheon says, “I’ve got to accomplish the things I want to in college football before I move on. I want to win the Rose Bowl again. The national championship, the Thorpe award, those are things I’ve wanted.”

And on the other: “When you make a decision like that, a lot goes into it, like where you’d go in the draft. It all comes down to the individual. In my case, there’s a lot more than just myself. There’s my mom, my family. . . . Sometimes I feel like maybe you have to sacrifice.”