LOS ANGELES — Eighty-one minutes before kickoff, as Kendrick Lamar’s “Humble” boomed over the stadium speakers and USC’s other offensive linemen rushed out of the tunnel in boundless adrenaline, Emmanuel Pregnon hobbled.

He was running behind the group, his massive right knee wrapped in a huge bundle of gauze. He ran outside, visibly placing less of his 320-pound frame on his right side. He ran at full speed Giancarlo Stanton completes third base on Monday night.

Half an hour later, he broke into a full run, a Trojan warrior who woke up that morning and decided he was dead. ready to kill despite the groaning pain in his right leg.

“No matter how much you hurt, you have to push yourself to move on with life,” Pregnon said Tuesday.

“I think football is a game of life and this is just a testament to how you have to attack life.”

Left defender Pregnon, for all intents and purposes, probably should not have played in last Friday’s football game. In fact, Lincoln Riley and the USC staff did not think he would play against Rutgers. After briefly exiting last week’s game against Maryland, he was, as Riley described it, “pretty questionable” earlier in the week and was listed as questionable on USC’s Big Ten injury report against the Scarlet Knights.

When the Colosseum cleared the following 42-20 win — a win widely regarded as the USC offensive line’s best performance of the season — Pregnon slowly climbed the postgame ladder for the honor of leading the Spirit of Troy. Slowly. It still hurts. He held out his hand and walked over the steps until he examined the area where he had just put his body on the line.

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

He stood on a tall, bad leg after the game against the Scarlet Knights, not allowing a single pressure. It was the culmination of Pregnon’s two-year ascent at USC since his 2023 transfer from Wyoming, where he went into the season as the most consistent member of a once-shaky line that has quietly blossomed into an effective unit in recent weeks.

He had entered the offseason starting to “take his body seriously,” as quarterback Miller Moss said Tuesday. After a first year in which he didn’t make much of a resounding impact, positive or negative, on a split USC line, Pregnon’s attitude toward the weight room has changed. He also showed his effort. So did its leadership.

“I remember and honor those guys,” Pregnon said in early October of the departing offensive line veterans “taking that position and assuming that role.”

That stability has been sorely needed alongside center Jonah Monheim on a line that has given starting opportunities to ever-improving youngsters Alani Noa and Elijah Paige. Pregnon had not allowed a sack in seven games as a starter entering Friday; His absence would be painful. The head coach even commented Tuesday that Riley said he didn’t know if Pregnon would be “mentally tough not just to play, but to play well.”

making a moviePregnon confirmed on Monday that it was painful. But he played. And I played well.

“The more people that align with people like that and those types of attitudes, the better we’ll be as a team,” Moss said.

INJURY UPDATES

After losing four very big starters (safety Kamari Ramsey and cornerbacks Jaylin Smith, Greedy Vance Jr. and Jacobe Covington) in the USC secondary against Rutgers, it remains to be seen whether anyone will pull Pregnon against Washington next Saturday. not sure.