LOS ANGELES — 81 minutes before kickoff, as Kendrick Lamar’s “Humble” blared through the stadium speakers and the rest of USC’s offensive linemen poured out of the tunnel in boundless adrenaline , Emmanuel Pregnon limped.

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

Half an hour later he was running with full pads, a Trojan warrior who had woken up that morning and decided he was ready to kill despite the pain that groaned in his right leg.

“No matter how much pain you are in,” Pregnon said Tuesday, “you have to push yourself to continue in life.”

“I feel like…football is a game of life, and it’s just a testament to how you’re supposed to attack life, too.”

Left back Pregnon, for all intents and purposes, probably shouldn’t have played a football match last Friday. Lincoln Riley and the USC staff actually didn’t think he was going to play against Rutgers. After briefly opting out in the previous week’s win over Maryland, he was “pretty doubtful” entering the week, as Riley described it, and listed as questionable against the Scarlet Knights on the team’s injury report. USC Big Ten.

By the time the Colosseum was out a 42-20 victory — a victory that, in large part, stands as USC’s best offensive line performance of the season — Pregnon slowly climbed the postgame ladder for the honor of leading the Spirit of Troy. Slowly. Still painful. Hand over hand, rung over rung, until he could survey the ground for which he had just put his body on the line.

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

He was standing tall on a bad leg after a game against the Scarlet Knights that allowed no pressure. It was the pinnacle of Pregnon’s two-year rise at USC since transferring from Wyoming in 2023, continuing the season as the most stable member of a once-fragile lineage that has quietly morphed into a unit effective in recent weeks.

He had entered the offseason, as quarterback Miller Moss said Tuesday, having started “taking his body seriously.” After a first year on a scrappy USC line where he didn’t leave a resounding impact — positive or negative — Pregnon’s attitude toward the weight room changed. His efforts too. The same goes for his leadership.

“I commemorate and honor those guys,” Pregnon said earlier in October of the veteran offensive linemen who had left, “taking that position and assuming that role.”

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

To pullIt would hurt, Pregnon said Monday. But he played. And well done.

“The more people that can align with people like that and attitudes like that,” Moss said, “the better our team will be.”

Injury Updates

After four starters in USC’s secondary were cut against Rutgers – safety Kamari Ramsey and cornerbacks Jaylin Smith, Greedy Vance Jr. and Jacobe Covington – it remains unclear whether any of them will draw a Pregnon this next Saturday against Washington.