This post was updated Jan. 11 at 12:12 a.m.

He won’t go down as the Bruins’ all-time leading passer.

And he won’t go down as the quarterback to break the blue and gold’s bowl win drought, either.

In the eyes of many UCLA football fans, the lasting image of Dorian Thompson-Robinson will be one of despair. A dejected demeanor after another interception, a tear-streaked face after squandering a chance to beat USC and a grimace from the sideline as his team’s bowl game hopes wash away.

But Thompson-Robinson’s lasting legacy at UCLA should be quite the opposite. The quarterback who threw more touchdowns than anyone in program history, the quarterback who hurdled beyond belief and the quarterback who gave Bruin fans a reason to smile in an otherwise uninspiring chapter for the program.

Friday’s outcome doesn’t change that in the slightest.

When both teams retreated to their respective locker rooms at halftime of the Sun Bowl, Thompson-Robinson stood 22 yards shy of the top spot on UCLA’s all-time passing yardage leaderboard. At the same time, he stood one half away from handing the Bruins their first bowl win since 2014 and a 10-win season to boot.

If UCLA’s defense doesn’t give up 23 second-half points to an offense led by a fifth-year quarterback who barely had 500 passing yards to his name, Thompson-Robinson is the quarterback of a 10-win team. If two of his passes are caught instead of tipped directly into the waiting arms of Pittsburgh defenders, Thompson-Robinson is statistically the greatest passer in UCLA history.

One half of relatively meaningless football shouldn’t change the narrative that could’ve been. Instead, it should serve as a reminder of everything Thompson-Robinson gave to this program.

He didn’t need to come back for a fifth season. He didn’t need to play in this game. He didn’t owe UCLA anything more.

But Thompson-Robinson wanted one last shot to check one of the few boxes he had yet to tick off as a Bruin. He’d earned the individual acclaim, he’d led miraculous comebacks, he’d put together winning seasons, he’d made too many highlight-reel plays to count, and he’d done what no other UCLA quarterback had done.

That box might still be left unchecked, but it won’t be the fault of Thompson-Robinson. And there might not be a better description of his career than that.

Time and again over the last five years, UCLA has come up short. More often than not, Thompson-Robinson is pointed at as a primary cause for the Bruins’ underperformance.

But it’s easy to scapegoat Thompson-Robinson and forget the circumstances that shaped his career. He started for the Bruins as a true freshman, he had no true WR1 this season, and he has consistently been dealt some of the most porous defenses in this country. He’s made his fair share of mistakes, but he’s done far more good than harm in Westwood.

There’s a reason coach Chip Kelly – notoriously sparse with his words – never misses an opportunity to defend his quarterback. And there’s a reason his teammates go as he goes.

When a team takes a chance on him at the NFL Draft in April, that’s the Thompson-Robinson they’ll be drafting. But regardless of where his professional career ends up, Thompson-Robinson should be remembered as one of the greatest quarterbacks to ever put on a UCLA jersey.

He deserves nothing less.