How does USC replace Caleb Williams? By adding 1,400 pounds

Paolo Uggetti, ESPNAug 20, 2024, 07:00 AM ET LOS ANGELES, CA– It doesn’t take much to see that things are different at USC this year.Yes, Lincoln Riley is still the head coach– his 3rd season, in truth– and the Trojans do return a number of players from last season and numerous other coaches too. The objective, the message, the approach– no one will inform you any of those have actually changed. But it’s likewise clear that things are extremely various indeed.Walk onto the

practice field and you’ll immediately see the glossy, green brand-new turf field USC has actually developed being flaunted and utilized. The practice location is now twice as large. Look around and you’ll see banners announcing what’s coming: a completely new football center, expected to cost, $200 million, can be found in 2026.

Take a better watch out onto the abovementioned field and you’ll see plenty of changes too. D’Anton Lynn has actually gone from wearing UCLA Bruins blue and gold to hopscotching his way down the 405 highway to try and take USC’s defense into the future. Anybody who viewed a game of the Trojans in 2015 knows they need it.Lynn’s deluge of a relocation brought along others in the exact same existing, not simply coaches from around the nation with breadth and depth of experience in college and the NFL, but likewise much-needed talented protectors from UCLA, Oregon State and Texas A&M to attempt and improve both in the present and the future.Editor’s Picks

2 Related “I do believe that we’re fortunate enough to be at a location that you can have a shot at anybody,”Riley stated when he hired Lynn.”We just decided that we’re not going to fret about an existing task that these guys have. We’re going to go after the best. “And yet possibly the greatest modification, the weightiest and most substantial, can be discovered under center. Caleb Williams is gone. Get In Miller Moss. The junior, who supported Williams the previous 2 seasons, is both a fresh face and a familiar one. It is as close to connection as USC might have gotten short of convincing Williams to bypass the NFL one more season.Zoom in just a bit more and you can also see what lots of players and coaches have actually been speaking about for much of the offseason. The Trojans are larger– 1,400 collective pounds bigger, according to Riley– and have put an emphasis on improving their roster. Actually.”When we got here, simply with the plan modification going into the brand-new conference, we knew that we needed to grow,”Lynn said.” We understood we needed to get stronger.” USC’s 2024 season will not totally be determined by what life after Williams might look like. It won’t boil down to how much weight

or strength they’ve acquired, or be anticipated to be revamped by a single training hire.Without a Heisman Prize winner and No. 1 general pick on its lineup, USC is counting on what it has been able to construct and evolve over the past three years under Riley to turn what might be a down year for the Trojans into one where they could be in a position to surprise. “I feel a bright energy around the team this year,”pass receiver Zachariah Branch said.”I absolutely feel like everyone’s fully invested into the team and I feel like that’s just going to help us excel.” USC linemen, such as Elijah Page, consumed about 5,000 to

6,000 calories a day this past offseason. Brian Rothmuller/Icon Sportswire EVENTUALLY, Elijah Paige and Mason Murphy stopped counting calories. The required this offseason from the coaching personnel and Rachel Suba, USC’s director of sports nutrition, was that USC linemen would eat about 5,000 to 6,000 calories a day, once you get to a particular regular with the quantity of food, the calories count is second nature.”I got to the point where I was more simply consuming a great deal of big meals,” Murphy said.

“4 big meals a day, so that absolutely gave me some gains. “”I was simply consuming whatever they put in front of me,”

Paige said.” Whatever I might consume to gain weight.” Behind the 1,400-pound overall that Riley touted are Suba and Bennie Wylie, USC’s director of sports efficiency, who were the architects of the offseason physical fitness strategy that players dedicated to.Suba and Wylie created a cohesive offseason prepare for players and each position group that catered to their requirements– be it putting on weight, losing it or merely preserving. From the meals to the exercises, the goal was to get stronger in preparation for a season that would be various in more methods than one.” They have physically ready us and that has simply mentally ready us to be all set for this season,” safety Christian Pierce stated.”I feel like now our strength is in our conditioning.”The overall weight added might be the headline, but USC’s players have actually been separately sharing before and after pictures of their progress, and more particularly, the weight got and body fat lost in the process. The additional strength, the way the whole group has actually embraced the procedure of getting bigger and much faster, appears to have actually pushed USC’s roster as it gets in a brand-new fray it understands will ask even more than previous seasons have.”I think last year the emphasis and the significance of getting bigger and more powerful was shown,” cornerback Bryson Shaw stated. His own offseason calorie count hovered around 4,500.”We knew we needed to improve in that area and Coach Wiley and his staff challenged us to react to the criticism. And I believe we really reacted well. Going into this season, I think we’re much way more ahead than where we were going into last season. “What looms larger is the unpredicted nature of playing in a completely brand-new conference, where different designs and different opponents wait for. Like Lynn, some coaches and players view the included focus on strength as an essential

point of transitioning into the Big Ten. “We wish to have a physical existence. We wish to discuss being one of the most physical or if not the most physical group in the nation,”linebackers coach Matt Entz stated. Last year, USC missed a total of 141 takes on.”It’s a game of obstructing

and taking on. Not to oversimplify the game, but often as coaches it’s easy to do that. We need to be fundamentally better than our challengers which’s where we’re at right now. We got to continue to every day go out there with that mentality.” D’Anton Lynn was training at UCLA before pertaining to USC. Jevone Moore/Icon Sportswire THE ELEPHANT IN the room all of last season– and truly, the past 2 years– was USC’s defense. At its finest, it was bending however not breaking enough to enable them to remain in games. At its worst, it was actively working against an offense that, sometimes, was one of the best in the country.Riley relented and fired defensive planner Alex Grinch with two games left in the routine season. Then, as many individuals expected that USC would look everywhere for a replacement– maybe into Big 10 nation even– Riley simply reached across town and employed the coach that turned UCLA’s defense into among the best in the country.With Lynn came not just the subsequent hires of secondary coach Doug Belk from Houston, North Dakota State head coach Entz to coach linebackers and previous NFL assistant Eric Henderson to coach the protective line. “It’s revamped the energy in the building, something that we needed,”Shaw stated of the brand-new staff.While several returning members of USC’s defense– and those who are brand-new also– are avoiding comparing and contrasting what this year’s defense currently seems like to last, some are not hesitating in doing simply that.”The culture last year wasn’t something that everyone was supporting and consented to uphold. It involved a lot

of the leaders just letting things slide, not thinking everything mattered,” linebacker Mason Cobb stated.”So for this year, I believe a lot of guys have actually been here, a lot of transfers have actually comprehended what we’re attempting to do here and gotten on board and everyone’s on board.””I would say it’s night and day when it comes to this year and last year,

“quarterback Moss stated of the defense.”I think going against undoubtedly guys like Kamari [Ramsey], Easton [Mascarenas-Arnold] who can be found in, Mason Cobb, together with a lot of truly unique players in the secondary makes it tough for me as a quarterback. However it likewise makes me much better.”Without revealing method, USC defenders and other coaches have actually explained Lynn’s system as” streamlined, “”flexible,” “aggressive,” “enjoyable to learn “and one that allows them to feel”maximized”and”play to their strengths.””I believe it is a pro scheme, multiple fronts, numerous protections, a lot of things that could potentially confuse our opponent,” Belk stated.”But most of all it’s player friendly and we wish to be able to play fast and play physical and play clever football and correspond

in whatever we do.”At the center of it is Lynn, who appears to have impressed everybody in the building with how rapidly he’s not just discovered his groove with a new personnel and lineup, but how he is handling trying to bring players up to speed while attempting to get the unit as an entire to feel and play in a cohesive fashion.”The hardest thing in college is just the timeframe that you have,”Lynn said.”You do not have a lots of time to satisfy, so you have to be very effective with how you install. You do not have a lots of time on the field. You need to be extremely effective with how you do your walkthroughs.” With a limited amount of time and what amounts to a brand-new language that Lynn has to teach and implement within his personnel and throughout the system, USC’s defense has gone through a fasted lane education in between spring practice and fall camp. Lynn, for his part,

has tried his best to keep things simple enough to be absorbable but not watered down to the point where they are ineffective.”[ Lynn] does an exceptional task of separating what we’re doing from a mentor perspective,”Entz stated. “If we can teach the game in terms of principles and rules and concepts, then you must be able to have some volume to the defense. If you need to go out there and your players are memorizing what’s going on, you’re going to struggle a little bit.”There’s no certainty that Lynn’s scheme and technique will pay dividends, especially not right away, however the preparation has put USC in a position to immediately improve upon last year’s performance.

The bar might be low, however the objectives Lynn and the rest of the defense have for themselves are much higher. “You have actually seen what he performed in one year at UCLA made them among the best defenses in the country,” linebacker and Oregon State transfer Mascarenas-Arnold stated.”Therefore for me, I expect nothing less. I don’t think any person else on the team would not state that either. So I believe we have the possible to be one of the best.” Bryson Shaw stated his calorie count was around 4,500 a day. Jessica Alcheh-USA TODAY Sports MUCH OF HOW USC browses a schedule that includes LSU, Michigan, Penn State, Washington and Notre Dame may still boil down to Moss.

This is a Riley offense and group, after all, where the assaulting unit is the show and the quarterback is the orchestra’s first chair.Williams had his technique and design; Moss has his own. The connection in between them should have the desired impact. Several of the players that Moss initially experimented on scout team during his early years at USC are now projected starters themselves.” I’ve currently had chemistry with Miller since that very first year we were both here, we constantly linked in practice actually well,”stated wide receiver Kyle Ford, who was at USC for

2 full seasons before transferring to UCLA last year and back to USC this year.”Now it’s simply a continuation of what that’s been. I’m delighted that we didn’t lose it for many years.”It is not rather an intangible, but Moss ‘commitment to USC over the years is now reaping its benefits

, not simply in the type of a beginning task he longed for, however more in the kind of how his peers, colleagues and all of those who will take cues from him as a leader now view him.” He’s going into his fourth year at USC therefore I think all the guys have a different level of regard for him and what

he’s done his entire journey,”Branch said.”He is by far the leader of this football team. I think he has truly simply been able to bring the group together. Everyone rallies around him.” Moss ‘six touchdowns in the DirecTv Vacation Bowl that all however protected him the beginning gig was simply the start. Given that, he admitted he’s gone through a learning curve as he tries to guarantee that his efficiency in December is not kept in mind as an aberration, a simple blip on his college career, but rather a precursor of what he can do when this season begins.Now that he remains in the motorist’s seat, Moss has actually gained a level of convenience and personal experience inside Riley’s system. Whatever he attempted to take in while

sitting on the bench the previous two seasons is now all set to be used.” At the end of the day, I think it’s more about what you make with it than just being called the starter,”Moss stated.”It’s about going and winning games. “Riley, Moss, Lynn and the rest of USC’s group referred to as well as anyone that in the end, all of the additional work, the effort took into weightlifting or nutrition, into improving the makeup of this group, can be rendered meaningless in the span of a game, even a play. For all the modification USC is experiencing in its first year without Williams, there is one thing that remains: it will all boil down to results.