Luke Wafle’s name is starting to carry real weight for USC, and Saturday night gave everyone another reminder why.
The No. 19 Trojans leaned on the freshman defensive end in their 25-21 win over Washington, and Wafle answered with the kind of performance that turns heads fast.
He logged five tackles, four of them solo, added two tackles for loss and finished with the first sack of his college career in cardinal and gold. That effort also earned him Big Ten Freshman Player of the Week honors, the first weekly award of his career.
The sack itself had a little drama attached to it. Early in the game, Wafle looked like he had his first one wrapped up in the second quarter when a bad snap sailed over Washington quarterback Demond Williams Jr.’s head.
Williams scrambled to recover, and Wafle got to him for what appeared to be the stop. But the play came back because officials ruled Wafle had grabbed Williams’ facemask.
He didn’t have to wait long for another shot. With USC protecting a five-point lead and less than four minutes left, Williams stepped up in the pocket on a first down play, and Wafle powered past Geirean Hatchett to bring him down.
“It was good. It was long time coming.
It’s like a weight off my shoulders,” Wafle said. “You not only have to beat the man in front of you, but you have to be aware of where (Williams) is at all times.
He’s very slippery, and it was a good challenge for our d-line.”
Wafle kept coming in the final stretch, too. On Washington’s last possession, with USC defending a 25-21 lead, he was in the middle of the action again, piling up three tackles during that sequence and adding another sack.
Even after that, Williams pushed the Huskies past midfield with a little more than two minutes remaining, but Wafle wasn’t done. Right after the two-minute timeout, he reached Williams again for a tackle for loss as the quarterback tried to take off.
“The bounce back is huge for us, especially as a defense. We wanted to play a lot better collectively,” Wafle said.
Through this point in the season, Wafle leads USC with 4.5 tackles for loss and ranks among the team’s top three tacklers with 22 total stops.
And with Penn State up next on the road, the spotlight on the freshman is only getting brighter as USC heads into Happy Valley.
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