USC coach Lincoln Riley was asked after the Trojans' commanding win over Notre Dame on Saturday, which served as something of a punctuation mark to quarterback Caleb Williams' Heisman campaign, if he's ever surprised anymore by Williams' uncanny ability to evade peril in the pocket and scramble his way to big plays.

"I mean, I've obviously seen him do it a lot. I'm proud of the decisions that he's making, other than one tonight," Riley said as Williams shot him a confused look while sitting to his right at the postgame press conference.

"Yeah, that one -- the one where you got sacked for like a 30-yard loss," Riley said playfully.

"Oh yeah," Williams said smiling and looking down as the room broke into laughter.

It was easy to forget that one with how many incredible plays Williams delivered while on the move in that 38-27 win over the Fighting Irish.

"No, it is impressive," Riley said. "The escapability, the ability to get out of tackles and also kind of the combination of quickness with it. I think there's just a trust there because a high percentage of the time he makes the right play on it, and he's made obviously a lot of big plays in that scenario for us."

Williams' teammates had to laugh as well when asked about the one where he initially stepped up in the pocket to avoid a lunging defender, only to realize there was nowhere to go that way so he turned back again and literally ran a circle around the Notre Dame defense before finding a seam, cutting left and making three guys miss before sliding to a stop after 19 yards and smoothy signaling for the first down.

"I didn't know who to block, man. I went right, I went left, I was like, 'What's he going to do?'" right guard Justin Dedich recalled. "I thought maybe he was going to slide. I was watching it and I kind of look like a dummy, I was just running around with my head [turning both ways]. But it's just unbelievable the things he can do out there."

"Tiring," running back Austin Jones said of what he thinks watching his QB extend plays like that. "In scramble drill, I'm like, 'Bro, where you gonna go?' But I mean, shoot, that's what happens when you have a Heisman, dynamic quarterback. I mean, the dude's unreal. The stuff he does, no one can do. He's the best quarterback in the country, best player in the country by far and I stand by that."

The national college football world seems to agree.

Williams enters the weekend as the overwhelming favorite for the Heisman Trophy, with odds ranging from -2500 to -3000 (meaning a person would have to risk $3,000 to win $100) depending on the sportsbook.

Williams briefly did the Heisman pose on the sideline after one of his three touchdown runs vs. Notre Dame, but he mostly sidestepped a question about the Heisman spotlight afterward -- as deftly as he would an oncoming pass rusher.

"I honestly struck [the pose] because a bunch of my teammates were saying do it. I normally don't -- after I score, I normally just kind of don't do anything -- so they told me to do it. They kept saying it, so I just ended up doing it in the moment," he said. "But like coach said, we've got a short week and ... we have goals in mind we want to reach."

His teammates had no problem talking about it, meanwhile, just as USC has had no hesitation pushing out an aggressive Heisman campaign on Williams' behalf on its social media channels and in the Coliseum on Saturday.

"I mean, I'll talk about it right now. I think he's the best player in the country," Jones said.

"He the one. He the one. That's all I can say -- I had to crown him myself," said wide receiver Jordan Addison, who was one of Williams' Trojans teammates who pretended to put a crown on his head after his scores.

By Tuesday's practice, Williams had opened up a little more about the significance of potentially winning college football's top prize.

"I started to actually learn about the Heisman probably around 10, 11, 12 years old and it's been a goal of mine, because I think I'm the best and that's one of the trophies that kind of represents that," the sophomore QB said. "When I was younger, for sure, it was on my mind a little more than now. Now since being in college, I still think I'm the best player -- I thought that last year when I was playing, I thought it before I came into college. So, just a certain confidence, but not necessarily focused on that since I've been in college. It's been more of a, I want to go to the playoffs, I want to go win, I want to go win championships with the team that I'm on."

Williams' teammates like his outward confidence because it does seem genuinely couched in a team-first mentality. They say they feed off it, like when USC fell behind 14-0 at UCLA two weeks ago and the rest of the team saw the poise and confidence of its QB unfazed on the way to a 48-45 win.

"I mean, from Day 1, he was just kind of like a leader walking in here. It wasn't like he was cocky, but he just had this swagger about him," Dedich said. 'It's just something you can believe and trust in and know he's going to get the job done."

The question no longer seems to be whether Williams will win the Heisman -- it's hard to imagine any scenario in which he doesn't at this point barring a total catastrophe in the Pac-12 championship game Friday vs. Utah -- but rather where he slots in among the Trojans' all-time greats.

This is, after all, a school and program that boasts seven Heisman Trophy winners all-time -- damn right, we're counting Reggie Bush's vacated Heisman.

That bigger question doesn't need to be answered just yet. Williams still has another season to play here next year, more accolades to accrue and records to challenge.

But what he's already done is undeniable. Not only has he passed for 3,712 yards, 34 touchdowns and just 3 interceptions while rushing for 351 yards and 10 touchdowns (breaking Matt Barkley's program record with those 44 combined TDs) -- he's helped lift this program from the depths of 4-8 all the way to the Pac-12 championship game and the brink of the College Football Playoff.

He's also been at his best in the Trojans' biggest games along the way.

-In the midseason loss at Utah, he passed for 381 yards, 5 TDs, 0 INTs and rushed for 57 yards.

-In the 48-45 win over rival UCLA at the Rose Bowl to clinch USC's spot in the conference championship game, he completed 32 of 43 passes for a career-high 470 yards, 2 TDs, a rare INT and rushed for another score. His 503 total offensive yards were the most ever by any player in the history of the USC-UCLA rivalry series.

-And last week in the win over Notre Dame, he completed 18 of 22 passes for 232 yards and 1 TD and rushed for 3 more scores.

Now he and the Trojans get a rematch with Utah for the chance to claim a conference title and punch their ticket to the College Football Playoff, which would off course polish off the Heisman for Williams.

During Utah coach Kyle Whittingham's press conference earlier this week, a reporter started off a question by noting that Williams was great against the Utes in that October meeting. Whittingham interjected ...

"He's been great every game -- show me a game where he's not great," he said.

"I think he just keeps getting better and better. He's maybe the most difficult quarterback to sack that we've ever come across that is also a great throwing threat," Whittingham continued. "We've played some athletic quarterbacks that were really like a wide receiver playing QB or whatever, but as far as a true QB, nobody harder to sack than that guy. He keeps the plays alive, he extends the plays, he keeps his eyes downfield incredibly well during the scrambles. He very rarely glances at the rush, he's always just seeing it peripherally and he seems like he's got eyes in the back of his head. Some of the escapes that he has are just fantastic, and he's just 20 years old, second year out of high school, true sophomore. So what he's doing is prettty, well, very impressive. Odds-on favorite to win the Heisman."

Whittingham wasn't done, answering a later question about his pass rush with more praise and awe for Williams.

"You can get there, but you can't sack him because he's so elusive. He's strong too. He is so strong. There's so many defenders through the course of the season that have dripped right off him because you just can't get him down," he said.

Dedich, meanwhile, was asked more about the challenge of blocking during those scramble drill plays and if he's ever inadvertently blocked a defender the wrong direction into Williams' path. He said indeed he did, in that UCLA game, pushing edge rusher Laiatu Latu right into Williams for a sack.

"Sometimes it's just best to let him do his magic and just watch," Dedich said.

As Williams surged ahead in the Heisman race over these last two weeks, we went back to pull out the 10 best plays from those two games. We ended up with 19 we felt were worthy of inclusion but pared it down to a top 10 (OK, 12) nonetheless.

Here's the list. Like Dedich said, sit back and watch Williams do his magic ...

The setup: It was second-and-13 from the Notre Dame 40-yard line near the end of the third quarter. Williams Houdini act was a crushing conversion against a Fighting Irish defense that badly needed a stop. Instead, Williams would score a touchdown three plays later to make it a 31-14 USC lead.

Let's take another look at it ...

The setup: It was third-and-5 from the Notre Dame 46 on USC's second drive of the game when Williams steps up to avoid a sack and then transitions quickly into a backpedal with more defenders coming at him, creating enough separation to briefly move to his right and unfurl a long pass to a wide-open Jordan Addison for a 23-yard gain.

The setup: USC was down 21-10 late in the second quarter against the Bruins, facing a second-and-10 from its own 21. Williams steps up in the pocket, sees pressure coming from his right and takes of running horizontally to the left, making sure to stay behind the line of scrimmage. While on the move, he throws across his body with elite velocity to fit a strike into Kyle Ford that whizzes past a defensive back trying to make a play on it. Ford turns upfield for a 49-yard gain, the Trojans soon score a much-needed touchdown.