Peete’s Heisman Campaign Opener Shows He May Have a Strong Ticket

CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. —  It was opening night for Rodney Peete’s right arm, which produced an award-winning performance, possibly the first of many that could propel him toward the H-word.

Dare he say it? The H-word? Peete could scarcely bring himself to mention the Heisman Trophy after USC’s 34-7 bulldozing of Boston College Thursday night. But if he would admit nothing else, at least Peete knew he was off to a good start.

“You take out those two interceptions and I played pretty good,” Peete said. “But I wasn’t thinking about (the Heisman) on the field. It’s on the back burner right now.

“I understand it. I understand I’m going to be the focal point of the team right now, but it’s always a team game. I’m just going to do what it takes to put my team in the end zone more times than the other team.”

So the race for the H-word has begun, and Peete, one of the front-runners, threw his helmet into the ring with distance and accuracy.

Peete completed 21 of 33 passes for 271 yards and helped USC convert 11 of 16 third-down situations.

He also threw one pass for a touchdown, on a 33-yard play to sophomore flanker Gary Wellman that had a certain symmetry to it. Peete got the ball to Wellman between the two defenders who had intercepted his passes earlier.

On that touchdown pass, Peete got a share of his 13th USC record, tying Paul McDonald (1976-79) for most career touchdown passes with 37.

Working behind a line with two question marks, Dan Barnes and Michael Moody, Peete punctuated the Trojan offense with a variety of short passes, seven of them to Erik Affholter.

“You talk about players with heat on them, (Barnes and Moody) had some pressure,” USC Coach Larry Smith said. “Rodney did, too, with all the hype. But I’d give him an excellent grade.”

Four USC players have won the Heisman, but they were all tailbacks, so Peete is trying to break new ground by winning it in the air.

In times past, Peete might have turned tailback and run at the early mention of trouble, but he said he has outgrown that tendency. Against the Eagles, Peete ran just once, and that was on a busted play.

“Early in my career, I had a tendency to pull the ball down and run a little too soon and not hang in there,” Peete said. “But I’ve been around awhile now.”

Boston College, which has been around for 90 years, wasn’t so fortunate with its quarterbacks. Coach Jack Bicknell yanked Mike Power, his starter, early in the second quarter and used Mark Kamphaus for a while.

When Power came back, he was booed by some of the hometown fans, who obviously were hoping for a Power outage.

The Eagles should have known they were in trouble long before that.

USC players got an unexpected lift from reading the Boston newspapers, which quoted cornerback Steve Williams as predicting a 21-14 Boston College victory.

The Eagles also had to use their kicker as a punter because regular punter David Rooney had broken his ankle falling off a skateboard, which would seem to be more of a Southern California-type injury.

If Smith was worrying about his offensive line, he needn’t have. Anchored by 6-foot 4-inch, 320-pound tackle John Guerrero, as big as a houseboat, Peete was rarely pressured.

“He’s easy to block for,” Guerrero said. “I love the guy.”

As often as Peete throws him the ball, maybe Affholter should be going steady with him.

“One of my goals this year is to help Rodney Peete win the Heisman,” Affholter said. “I know he can’t win it if we run the football. He’s our leader out there. We sort of go with the flow.”

The flow was stopped only for a while, when the Trojans changed their pass routes and decided to junk the short passes and throw deep instead. That is when Peete had his two passes intercepted.

“I got greedy,” Peete said.

Smith said it wasn’t Peete’s fault. “Nah, we called the plays. I put him in a bad thing.”

But Peete was in a good thing most of the time.

“I’m just going to play within myself,” he said. “If it so happens that I can accumulate the statistics associated with the Heisman, so be it. If not, I’ll be satisfied with winning the Pac-10 title and taking my team to the Rose Bowl.”