Tameka Marks knows her son better than anyone, and even from her seat in the first row behind the USC sideline in the Coliseum, she could tell something was off last Saturday.

Not with Woody Marks' performance, of course -- he rushed for a career-high 146 yards to top the 1,000-yard rushing mark for the first time -- but even still, he looked winded to her, like he was laboring more than usual.

"I noticed during the game he looked like he was having difficulty breathing so I was thinking maybe his asthma was starting to flare up," she said.

Little did she know, the flu had spread through the USC program and coach Lincoln Riley would reveal after the 28-20 win over Nebraska, with pride, how this latest performance from his star running back was so reflective of the reliable impact Marks has made for the Trojans this season.

"He's been awesome. We didn't know for certain that he was going to play," Riley said. "We had a little flu outbreak ... but no, he's been consistent, steady, just a tough, physical runner. It's not a shock that the guy plays the way he does every week because he works every day. He's the same guy every day, he comes to compete, so game day is really no different. It's something you just come to expect out of him, and he's answered the bell for us all year long."

Marks -- who is up to 1,024 rushing yards and 9 touchdowns through 10 games on a career-high 5.9 yards per carry, along with 43 catches for 296 yards -- became USC's first 1,000-yard rusher since Ronald Jones II in 2017.

It was a milestone he and his family were keenly aware of, which probably had a lot to do with why he hadn't mentioned the whole flu thing to his mother.

"[After the game] he was just like, he couldn't breathe. So I just asked him, 'Do you have your pump?' He still didn't say anything about the flu. I was just thinking it was his asthma. Then that [next] morning when he's getting ready to take me to the airport, I'm looking at him, he's pouring down with sweat. So I'm like, 'What's going on?'" Tameka Marks said. "He's like, 'I think I got the flu or something.' That's when I go online and I see everybody talking about the flu. I'm like 'What in the world?' He knew I wasn't going to let him play [if he was sick] so he was trying to keep that from me."

Woody Marks kept one more thing from his mother last weekend -- the jersey he wore as he reached that 1,000-yard milestone for the first time in a college career that started back in 2020 at Mississippi State.

"She's got a lot of jerseys so I kept that jersey," he said. "She's got a lot of stuff. I've got nothing in my house football-related, so I kept the jersey. I had to keep that one."

Tameka Marks laughs when asked to share the story of how her son Jo'Quavious got the nickname Woody.

"It started because when he was born he had a little peck of hair. I was like, 'He looks like a little woodpecker.' And then my oldest son used to like Buzz Lightyear, and Woody was always looking at Toy Story with my son and he wanted to have the Woody outfit. After that, he just wanted to look at it every day, wear the costume every day, every Halloween that's what he wanted to be. And the name just stuck with him," Tameka said over the phone this week.

"Everybody from Atlanta calls him Woody -- we don't even call him Jo'Quavious. At Mississippi State they started calling him Woody because I got tired of them mispronouncing his name. I was like, 'No, just say Woody because y'all ain't going to keep mispronouncing his name.' Coach [Mike] Leach was the first one because he couldn't say Jo'Quavious for nothing."

Asked how many Halloweens her son went as Woody from Toy Story, she says, "Had to be four or five. Might have been more than that. It was every year, it was the same costume -- just a different size."

Marks certainly made a name for himself at Mississippi State, rushing for 1,883 yards, catching 214 passes for 1,225 yards and scoring 27 total touchdowns over four seasons for the Bulldogs.

But before last season was even done, Tameka Marks knew her son was going to need to finish his college football career elsewhere.

"There were just too many coaching turnovers going on at Mississippi State and a lot of players had already transferred, and it wasn't there for him to get to the next level with a high draft pick. It just wasn't there, so we needed to go somewhere where it was stable and where he could showcase all his skills to get a higher draft grade," she said.