It was almost three years ago that Nick Figueroa sat on the couch at his family's home in San Bernardino and reflected on a dizzying few days that had led up to his decision to sign with USC over UCLA that week.
A lot of Figueroa's story had already unfolded up to that point, but plenty more has happened since, so as the Trojans prepare to host the rival Bruins this week, the redshirt senior defensive end looked back again to put it all in perspective.
"It's pretty crazy to think about, just having been a USC fan growing up my entire life, I just always kind of kept tabs on the program and always looked at it with that elite sort of aura around it. So it's pretty crazy to think about," he said of how everything has played out. "But I don't know, I guess I just tried not to look too far ahead and continued to do my best in the things that I do every day. ... It's a great feeling and blessing, but I mean, there's still more to be done."
From redshirting for a FCS program at Cal Poly in 2017, to walking away from his scholarship to gamble on himself in the JUCO ranks at Riverside City College, to eventually earning his way to USC and emerging last season as the Trojans' leader in sacks and tackles for loss, Figueroa's is among the more interesting paths traveled on this Trojans team.
But the latest chapter hasn't been quite what he expected, and because of that, as he said, he isn't ready to make it the ending to his USC story.
RELATED: Listen to our full interview with Nick Figueroa on the Trojan Talk podcast
Figueroa thought coming into this season that it could be his last here, if all went well, before taking his shot at a professional football career, but shoulder and leg injuries have undermined those plans. Thanks to the extra year of eligibility granted to college athletes who went through the 2020-21 pandemic year, Figueroa has the option to return for one more season and as of now that is the plan, he told TrojanSports.com.
"It's been pretty unfortunate for me this season, but it's all right, there's always next season and there's still three games left," Figueroa said, adding that he expects to be active this week vs. UCLA after missing the last two games.
"Yeah, no doubt, I'm good for [this] week and the weeks after. In whatever capacity the team needs me, I'm ready to go and hopefully have a great offseason and come back next year, stay healthy and have a great season."
Figueroa will again hope to parlay a healthy and productive 2022 season into a NFL future -- he'd like to play the game for as long as he can -- but he also has a pretty impressive Plan B in the works as well.
Taking time during USC's unexpected bye last week, after Cal had to postpone the teams' game due to COVID issues, Figueroa went in-depth on his time at USC and how it's shaped his goals -- as much off the field as on it.
He earned his bachelor's degree in real estate development last May with a cumulative GPA of 3.76, graduating magna cum laude from USC's Price School of Public Policy, and is now pursuing a Master of Science in finance that he hopes to complete in December of 2022. There’s been talk of maybe pursuing a MBA from an Ivy League university like Harvard or Pennsylvania down the road. And he was announced last week as one of 20 semifinalists for the Jason Witten Collegiate Man of the Year award that recognizes both on and off-field achievements.
"I just kind of bought into school at USC when I had that first season and I just realized that the way you do something is the way you do all things, and like being a better student would help me be a better player because there's similarities between the classroom and football or any sports, competition really," he said. "Games are sort of like tests, and practice is sort of like studying. I just try to do my best every day."
That matches USC defensive line coach Vic So'oto's assessment as well, as he's often lauded Figueroa's steadiness and leadership within the unit.
"I know what I'm going to get out of 50 every time he goes out there and it's whatever he's got," So'oto has said.
So yeah, Figueroa's approach has been no different off the field.
Among the internships he's taken on the last couple years, he's gone to work with a small private equity group that operates apartment buildings throughout the west, gained experience in investment banking at Accelerate Sports LLC in Manhattan Beach, and with the commercial investments group at Kennedy Wilson in Beverly Hills.
"I hope to work on Wall Street. I've been doing a little bit of networking toward that now. There's a lot of USC alums that work there and hopefully [I can work] in like just general investment banking. I'm a very competitive person by nature and it's a competitive career field. I just think it lines up nicely with my interests," he said.
"I just see the competition just to get those jobs, and I see the competition once you're in those jobs, and I'm just like that's kind of been the motto of my life -- trying to compete to go a step higher, step further, so I just think it fits nicely with my story."
But again, he hopes all of that is down the road after his football career.
He may not be on Mel Kiper Jr.'s draft board or generating the same kind of buzz as fellow Trojans pass rusher Drake Jackson — Figueroa is effusive about what he’s learned from playing opposite Jackson the last few years — but Figueroa has always seen the vision for his football potential in ways maybe others didn't.
Surely, few thought he was a future USC sack leader -- he topped the team with 3.5 sacks and 7 tackles for loss in 6 games during the shortened season last year -- back in 2017 when he was redshirting at FCS Cal Poly.
He had been lightly recruited, having been more of a baseball player until near the end of his high school years, but even just in going through those freshman football practices at Cal Poly, getting some college coaching and going up against guys several years older than him, he believed he was capable of more.
He got his parents on board with him walking away from that scholarship to bet on himself and that's what put all of this in motion four years ago.
"I had to kind of pitch it to them for a while because obviously walking away from a college scholarship is just a pretty bold thing to do, especially in the name of going home and going to junior college, but they really allowed me to make those decisions and I'm really grateful to be where I'm at today," Figueroa said, reflecting back on it once more.
"It's a crazy story, but I don't know, I think I just wanted to take the opportunity knowing that the worst thing that could happen was ending up back at Cal Poly or a school like that."
When he got the opportunity to move on to USC, Figueroa had no crystallized expectations. "I just wanted to compete and contribute," he said.
This season was a little different, though. After his breakout performance in 2020, he admits he felt a little more pressure to think about and play for his future.
"I think this year I could have done a better job staying focused on what's going on right in front of me just because you start to hear your name mentioned and you start to hear 'Oh, it's possible to try to go the league,' this and that, and it kind of takes away from the focus on the football field because you're so worried about those statistics or how I grade out, when in reality you play the game the same way because people like you off of how you play the game," he said.
"I wouldn't say like I was bought into [thinking about the future], but I was pretty concerned with making plays, doing this, doing that, and then I ended up injured. It was a really hard moment to get injured again, having been injured in the offseason, having surgery in the offseason, so it kind of crushed me a little bit when it first happened."
Figueroa underwent shoulder surgery in the offseason and then injured his other shoulder (an AC sprain) in the season opener this year. He tried to play through it, but he logged only 9 snaps the next game before sitting out a week, coming back for a large workload against Oregon State, then a limited role against Colorado as it continued to fluctuate from there. More recently, interim head coach Donte Williams said it was a lower leg injury that kept Figueroa out the last two games.
Overall, he has 10 tackles and 2 tackles for loss this season, but he says his shoulder feels "really good now."
Figueroa knows he has another chance now to script a better ending to his USC story -- and, conveniently, enough time to take the next steps toward his other ambitious goals.
"Whenever I got to USC, I would always think, man, I wish I had four years at this place. It's crazy because through COVID that actually came true," Figueroa said. "... I wanted to do really well and hopefully have this be a last year and an opportunity to go play on at the next level, but I'm not crushed that it didn't happen. I still have this masters program that I'm going to continue through next fall, so things kind of line up well."
For now, though, the focus is back where it's usually been for Figueroa -- on what's right in front of him and how he can maximize the three games remaining in this trying year for both he and the Trojans program.
"[This season has been] tough, but we know the tasks ahead and the importance of them and that next year's going to be a new opportunity," he said. "And if we close this year out right then it's going to be off to a better start."
