Jaxson Dart wants to make sure the order of events is understood.

“I left before he got there,” the Giants’ rookie quarterback said this week.

It’s a little like a “you can’t fire me because I quit” situation. But Dart is right. He didn’t leave Southern Cal after his freshman season because Caleb Williams came to campus. He didn’t hit the transfer portal — common now but a somewhat scandalous egress strategy using the newly established rule in 2021 — and flee to Ole Miss because Williams took his job.

There certainly were signs of all that happening when the Trojans fired the coaching staff that had recruited Dart and brought in Lincoln Riley from Oklahoma, where he had coached the highly touted Williams during his freshman season. Williams, though, technically had yet to commit to USC

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