Brushing himself off

‘Dad, it’s bad.”

It was two weeks after he had been convicted of the loss to UCLA, two weeks since this anonymous lineman had been dragged under a burning spotlight that showered him with hateful sparks.

“Dad, I need a break.”

Kyle Williams had heard enough from the nasty bloggers, enough from the jeering callers, enough from a conscience that wouldn’t stop scolding him for three false-start penalties and several missed blocks.

“Dad, I’m going home.”

With that, the USC starting right tackle hung up the phone on his father and walked away.

A couple of hours before practice, a couple of weeks before the Rose Bowl, he left Heritage Hall, returned to his campus duplex, and plopped down on a couch in front of a darkened TV.

The official statement was that he missed the workout for “personal reasons.”

The real story is that Kyle Williams had been smothered under a pancake block of blame.

“I needed to go somewhere and find myself,” he said.

This, then, is the story of that journey.

This is about how, after the biggest Trojans loss in many years, the biggest of Trojans just disappeared.

This is also about how, a day later, he returned to help USC chase what could be one of its biggest victories.

That Kyle Williams will start his final game against Michigan in the Rose Bowl is a testament to everything that is good about this mythical creation known as the Trojan family.

That he nearly left the team beforehand is a testament to everything that is bad.

“People have no idea how difficult it can be to survive in this environment,” Williams said. “But once you do, you know can survive anything.”

Williams was the blond-haired, steely-eyed kid who thought he did everything right. For five years here, he has been 6 feet 6, 300 pounds of quiet steadiness.

He has not started until this season, but he never complained. He used the time to earn his degree, get married, father a child, set an example.

He wasn’t their best lineman, but the coaches couldn’t find anyone better, and certainly no one who was more representative of their overall mission.

“I’ve really tried to be a good person; I always thought good things happened to good people,” Williams said.

Good things happened to him earlier this season, as he gave up but one sack entering the UCLA game. But then he entered a powder-blue hell.

The Bruins defensive linemen were too fast. The Trojans quarterback, John David Booty, was too immobile. Williams was so worried about getting beat, he began jumping off the ball quicker, and quicker, and ...

“I knew I had to get out there as fast as I could, so I started trying too hard,” he said.

Williams committed a false-start penalty on USC’s third offensive possession, and it never got any easier. At one point, UCLA’s Bruce Davis remembers hitting Williams after a whistle, and Williams shouting for him to stop.

“I told him, ‘Hey, I’m going to be hitting you all day long,’ ” Davis recalled.

By the end of the game, the Trojans had scored nine points -- fewer than 20 for the first time in 64 games -- while the Bruins defense had six tackles for losses and two sacks.

Walking out of the Rose Bowl in his street clothes, tears still filling his eyes, Williams quickly realized where all the fingers would be pointed.

Four fans in USC jerseys waved to him and shouted, “Nice false starts.”

For someone not used to either fame or infamy, for a giant who only wanted to invisibly do his job, Williams was stunned.

A perfectionist, he was used to being too hard on himself. But to also hear it from everyone else? You could say his next two weeks were a nightmare. Except, surrounded by anger and consumed by guilt, he rarely slept.

“This is a kid who had done everything by the book,” said his father, Scott. “Then to see so many people turn on him like that? I wouldn’t wish it on anybody.”

By the time he showed up for practice two weeks later and realized that his coaches were going to attempt to replace him with Matt Spanos -- a move that didn’t work when Spanos could not become academically eligible -- Williams had seen enough.

“I felt like everything was piling on,” he said. “I had to figure out who I was again.”

No, he didn’t quit the team. No, he was never going to quit the team. But while he was missing, the Trojan family went into action.

Lenny Vandermade, a former Trojans lineman who is hoping to return as a graduate assistant, was hanging around practice when he noticed Williams was missing.

He jumped into his car and drove to Williams’ duplex and banged on his door.

“He was surprised to see me,” Vandermade said. “But I watched out for him when he first came into the program, and, among Trojan offensive linemen, that connection never ends.”

Vandermade sat across from Williams and talked about avoiding regrets. He talked about facing fears.

“Kyle told me that sometimes he feels like people around the program hate him,” Vandermade said. “I told him, get back in there and talk to them about it.”

Williams then talked to his father, who gave him the same advice.

“I told him, ‘Don’t let that one game define your career,’ ” Scott Williams said. “Be bigger than that.”

So Williams grew. He left home after practice and returned to Heritage Hall and met with a coaching staff that tried to understand.

“We know these kids endure a tremendous amount of pressure, and they sometimes try too hard to be perfect,” Coach Pete Carroll said. “I told Kyle he has to start trusting himself, and trusting us.”

Carroll gave Williams a copy of “The Inner Game of Tennis,” a book about relaxing under competitive stress.

Williams also went into one of the film rooms to watch the UCLA game by himself, for a second and final time, to answer his final questions.

“I still wondered if I caused this loss,” he said. “Watching that film, I did a lot of sighing. I saw a lot of mistakes. But I also realized, it wasn’t all on me.”

Of course not. Using an offensive lineman as a scapegoat is the worst kind of second-guessing. Blaming Kyle Williams for the UCLA loss is not only dumb, it’s wrong.

“An offensive lineman makes 80 great plays and nobody notices, but then they make one mistake and that’s the only thing anybody remembers,” USC center Ryan Kalil said. “It’s a tough spot for anybody.”

And now it gets even tougher, with Williams lining up Monday against Michigan standout defensive end LaMarr Woodley.

“I know who he is,” Woodley said of Williams, smiling. “And he is not just going to be getting me, he’s going to be getting all of us. He’s going to get worn out. That’s what we do.”

Williams says he is ready. He says it’s about more than football now. He says it’s all about the journey.

“On the last day I wear this jersey, I want to show everyone I deserve to wear it,” he said recently while walking back to the locker room after practice.

Adults stared, but he did not stare back. Children reached out their hands, and he smilingly leaned down and slapped them.

“Yeah,” he said again. “One more game. One more chance.”

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.