USC’s offensive line room never quite came together as a unit in 2023. I asked Lincoln Riley during his weekly press conference on Saturday about the offensive line’s play last year. He said there were games when the unit struggled and lost: UCLA, Notre Dame, and Oregon.
“Yeah, we had a we had a handful of games last year we didn’t play good enough you know, handful of the games that we lost,” answered Riley. He clarified the games were at Notre Dame and at home against Washington and UCLA. “We certainly didn’t play good enough in those games to win. We had some good moments but we were too inconsistent.”
The problems with the line started before the season kicked off. USC had to replace two huge pieces who anchored the veteran unit in 2022, All-America left guard Andrew Vorhees and multi-year starter Brett Neilon at center. USC had luck in 2022 bringing in Bobby Haskins as a grad transfer from Virginia to help shore up the line.
The hope was to slide Justin Dedich over from right guard to center in 2023 and bring in players from the portal. It began to fall apart when second-team All-SEC selection Ethan White, who transferred from Florida, suffered an injury which kept him from joining USC. He medically retired before he arrived on campus.
Riley went on to explain what went wrong last year, with the Trojans’ offensive line never coming together as a cohesive unit.
“I would agree, I don’t know that we ever completely gelled as a unit. I think it starts with your your older players. Your older guys, your leaders have got to play their best; they’ve got to be great leaders: they’ve got to set the tone. I think at times last year that did not necessarily happen all the time.
“So you know there’s obviously Jonah [Monheim], you’re talking about [Emmanuel] Pregnon — some of the guys that have now played some snaps for us. Mason Murphy, you need those guys to step up.”
Veterans will need to step up. The members of the 2023 class, who were true freshmen last year, are looking for leadership while competing for playing time this fall. During a press conference, Riley named all five offensive linemen from that class: Micah Banuelos, Elijah Paige, Alani Noa, Amos Talalele, and Tobias Raymond. Riley is relying on his upperclassmen’s consistent leadership to bring this group together.
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