D’Anton Lynn, USC’s new defensive coordinator, is only 34 years old. He is six years younger than USC’s head coach, 40-year-old Lincoln Riley. Lynn is therefore one of the youngest coordinators in the country. Few FBS programs, particularly in the Power Five, have a defensive coordinator younger than Lynn.
To be clear about all of this, D’Anton Lynn does not have a long history in college football as a coach. Most of his time as a coach up to this point has been spent in the NFL. Lynn has already coached for several NFL teams. The point some USC fans are worried about is that Lynn doesn’t have a long list of recruiting victories in college football. That is a fact, but it’s a fact connected to the reality that Lynn has worked as a college coach for just one year. The sample size is small.
What is easy to miss is that while Lynn is just 34, he has already spent nearly a decade — 10 years — as a football coach. That’s one of the details which emerges when you look at D’Anton Lynn’s football biography below: