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

He jogged out behind the group, with his massive right knee wrapped in a massive bundle of gauze. He jogged out, visibly placing less of his 320-pound frame on his right side. He jogged out with all the speed of Giancarlo Stanton rounding third Monday night.

Half an hour later, he jogged out in full pads, a Trojan warrior who’d woken up that morning and decided he was ready to kill despite the pain groaning in his right leg.

“No matter how hard you hurt,” Pregnon said on Tuesday, “you gotta push yourself to keep going in life.”

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

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

By the time the Coliseum had cleared after a 42-20 win — a win that, in large part, stood as USC’s best offensive-line performance of the season — Pregnon clambered up slowly on the postgame ladder for the honor of conducting the Spirit of Troy. Slowly. Still aching. Hand over hand, and rung over rung, until he could survey the field he’d just laid his body on the line for.

“I thought I was gon’ fall through that thing,” Pregnon smiled Tuesday.

He stood, tall, on a bad leg, after a game against the Scarlet Knights not allowing a single pressure. It was the peak of Pregnon’s two-year ascendance at USC since transferring from Wyoming in 2023, continuing the season as the steadiest member of a once-shaky line that’s quietly rounded into an effective unit in recent weeks.

He’d come into the offseason, as quarterback Miller Moss said Tuesday, having started to “take his body serious.” After a first year on a disjointed USC line where he didn’t quite leave a resounding impact — positive or negative — Pregnon’s attitude toward the weight room changed. So, too, did his effort. So, too, did his leadership.

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

On a line that’s given starting snaps to steadily developing youngsters Alani Noa and Elijah Paige, that steadiness has been sorely needed next to center Jonah Monheim. Pregnon hadn’t allowed a sack in seven games as a starter entering Friday; his absence would’ve 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, play well.”

Shoot, it’d hurt, Pregnon affirmed Monday. But he played. And played well.

“The more people that can fall in line with people like that and attitudes like that,” Moss said, “the better we’ll be as a team.”