How USC running back Emmanuel Pregnon has inspired strength through injuries – Daily News

LOS ANGELES – Eighty-one minutes before kickoff, as Kendrick Lamar’s “Humble” boomed through the stadium speakers and the rest of USC’s offensive linemen skipped out of the tunnel in boundless adrenaline, Emmanuel Pregnon stumbled.

He ran after the group, his enormous right knee wrapped in a huge bundle of gauze. He ran out and visibly placed less of his 320-pound frame on his right side. He jogged away with all the speed of Giancarlo Stanton rounded out third base Monday night.

Half an hour later he jogged out at full speed, a Trojan warrior who had woken up that morning and decided that he ready to kill despite the pain in his right leg.

“No matter how bad your pain is,” Pregnon said Tuesday, “you have to push yourself to keep going in life.”

“I feel like football is a game of life, and it’s just a testament to how to approach life as well.”

Left guard Pregnon probably shouldn’t have played in a football game last Friday. Lincoln Riley and the USC staff didn’t actually think he would play against Rutgers. After briefly leaving last week’s game against Maryland, he was “pretty questionable” early in the week, as Riley described, and was listed as questionable against the Scarlet Knights on USC’s Big Ten injury report.

By the time the Colosseum was next a 42-20 victory – a win that was in large part the best performance of the season for the USC offensive line – Pregnon slowly climbed the postgame ladder for the honor of directing the Spirit of Troy. Slowly. Still in pain. Hand over hand, and over sport, until he could survey the field in front of which he had just aligned his body.

“I thought I was going to fall through that thing,” Pregnon smiled Tuesday.

He stood tall, with a bad leg, after a match against the Scarlet Knights that did not allow any pressure. It was the culmination of Pregnon’s two-year rise at USC since transferring from Wyoming in 2023, continuing the season as the steadiest member of a once-shaky line that has quietly been rounded into an effective unit in recent weeks.

He had come into the offseason, as quarterback Miller Moss said Tuesday, after he “started taking his body seriously.” After a first year on a inconsistent USC line where he didn’t really leave a resounding impact – positive or negative – Pregnon’s attitude toward the weight room changed. That’s what he tried too. This also applied to his leadership.

“I remember and honor those guys,” Pregnon said earlier in October of offensive line veterans who had left, “by taking that position and taking on that role.”

On a line that has given starting moments to steadily developing youngsters Alani Noa and Elijah Paige, that stability was desperately needed alongside center Jonah Monheim. Pregnon had not allowed a sack in seven games as a starter; his absence would have hurt. Riley even made the comment, the head coach said Tuesday, that he didn’t know if Pregnon would be “mentally tough to not just play, but like to play well.”

To shoot“It had hurt,” Pregnon confirmed on Monday. But he played. And well played.

“The more people can relate to people like that and attitudes like that,” Moss said, “the better we will be as a team.”

INJURY UPDATES

After no fewer than four USC secondary starters were out against Rutgers – safety Kamari Ramsey and cornerbacks Jaylin Smith, Greedy Vance Jr. and Jacobe Covington – it’s still unclear if anyone will pull a Pregnon against Washington next Saturday.