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In each of the first two USC football games of the 2024 season, our report card has handed out A-level grades to the Trojans’ defense. D’Anton Lynn, Eric Henderson (woof, woof — dawgwork!), Matt Entz, Doug Belk, Shaun Nua, and Taylor Mays are all getting the job done in a big way. You can’t get any better than pitching a shutout. That’s what USC did this past Saturday night against Utah State. Given how well this defense is playing, it stands to reason that defensive recruits are going to start taking USC a lot more seriously. They’re going to respect USC more and will give the Trojans a longer look. You can already see the difference on the recruiting trail. Four-star linebacker Ty Jackson committed to USC football on Sunday, picking the Trojans over Florida, Florida State, Alabama, and other high-profile national programs. This is what it looks like when USC takes defense seriously, when Lincoln Riley and athletic director Jennifer Cohen invest in professional-quality assistant coaches, and when a program commits itself to being the best on both sides of the ball, not just one.
Riley is an offensive play-calling genius, but he never pursued the very best results on defense until this past offseason, when the humiliation of a 7-5 regular season forced him to come to grips with his disastrous mistake of doubling down on and retaining Alex Grinch for the 2023 USC season. Riley learned his lesson. He was brought low. He knew he couldn’t settle for mediocrity on defense and trust that his offense could score 55 points to win games in spite of his team’s limitations. He finally made the kinds of changes he should have made a year ago. Now that those changes are taking effect, USC looks like a grown-up, responsible program again. Ty Jackson is one of the first prominent defensive recruits to not only notice this…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/four-star-lb-ty-jackson-145210792.html
Author : Trojans Wire
Publish date : 2024-09-09 14:52:10
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