He Worries About His Limitations, Not the Statue

His team had just cruised to its fourth consecutive victory, he had secured another USC career quarterback record and yet Carson Palmer seemed ... irked.

He kept bringing up mistakes, both his own and his team’s. He made it sound as if the Trojans were underachieving.

Good. A great player has to be, as Method Man once rapped, “Never satisfied, like the Stones.” The whole reason Palmer is putting up breakthrough and, yes, Heisman-consideration numbers is that he wasn’t happy with his performance in his first three-plus seasons at USC.

Just because he has thrown for 2,700 yards and 22 touchdowns and his Trojans are 7-2 after Saturday’s 49-17 victory at Stanford, don’t think it means he’s content.

“I expected to be undefeated,” he said. “I expected to lead this team to a victory every time we played. But I’m not mad.... As long as we’re winning, I’m happy.

“I want to be perfect. I want to play perfect every game.”

Guess that means he won’t take this comment from Coach Pete Carroll as a compliment: “He played close to perfect today.”

Palmer completed 22 of 32 passes for 317 yards and four touchdowns.

“He did everything we needed him to do,” Carroll said. “I thought he was terrific.”

Carroll’s lone complaint was a second-quarter play when Palmer rolled out, dropped back, held onto the ball too long and took a 26-yard sack on third-and-four. He even fumbled but jumped on the ball at his own 10-yard line.

Palmer called it a “stupid play.”

But teams can win when the stupid plays are singular, not plural. Bad decisions, bad passes and turnovers by Palmer would have been the only way for this overmatched Stanford team to win. Palmer didn’t throw an interception Saturday.

And after throwing as many interceptions as touchdowns (39) before this year, his touchdown-to-interception ratio is almost 3:1 for 2002. His four touchdowns Saturday gave him 61 for his career, surpassing Rob Johnson’s school record of 58.

That means Palmer holds every career quarterbacking record that matters at USC, including yardage and completions. Yes, he has had the rare privilege of starting since his freshman year, and one of his records (most pass attempts) has helped him set the others.

Sure, his job has been simplified. A lot of his completions and yardage consist of throwing a pass to Mike Williams near the line of scrimmage, then letting Williams take off and break a tackle or two.

“The game plan’s been so easy,” Palmer said. “Just throw a lot of quick stuff until they take away our quick routes, our quick slants and stuff like that. The game plan was real easy this week.”

Palmer got a chance to show his skills when he went over the top for a 17-yard touchdown pass to Keary Colbert for USC’s first score, and when he hit Kareem Kelly in stride down the sidelines for a 50-yard gain in the fourth.

“He’s confident in the players that are around him and he feels good about what he’s doing,” offensive coordinator Norm Chow said. “What more can you ask?”

How about putting some more points on the board? That’s what Palmer wants.

“We shoot ourselves in the foot all the time,” he said. “We should score every drive. We have opportunities to score every drive.... [It’s] just little mental errors.”

It’s tough to find fault with an offense on a team that has scored 40-plus points in three consecutive games. And Palmer is at the heart of it, coming off a 448-yard, five-touchdown game at Oregon and throwing 13 TD passes in the three games.

“I feel more confident and more comfortable, just from the experience,” Palmer said. “We’ve played nine games now, so I’m nine games better than I was in the first game.”

He might even be good enough to get a trip to New York for the Heisman Trophy presentation, if enough Eastern media people are paying attention.

“He doesn’t get half the credit nationwide that he deserves,” Williams said. “Everyone that follows SC knows how good he is. He’s showing it. He’s playing good ball. What he did in the last couple weeks is what we need.”

Palmer’s thoughts on the stiff-arming statuette?

“It would be awesome, it would be nice, but I’m really not concerned with that,” he said. “It would definitely be an honor, but I want to go to a big bowl. I want to go to a BCS bowl. I really want Washington State to lose and get a chance to go to the Rose Bowl. I really want to beat UCLA my last year and I want to beat Notre Dame bad. Any awards or personal accolades isn’t my concern right now.”

If he can just satisfy his own demands, that ought to be enough.

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J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com.