Tag: Amos Talalele

Amos Talalele, Gino Quinones hit the portal as USC loses O-line depth

Two portal departures on the USC offensive line will force the Trojans to go into the portal. Josh Henson has not developed this OL room as well as he could have.

USC football is watching its offensive line depth get reduced. Two linemen have hit the transfer portal in the past 20 hours. First it was Amos Talalele who declared his intent to transfer. Then Gino Quinones announced that he would enter the portal. USC has promptly lost interior offensive line depth, making the team’s situation entering 2025 a lot more precarious. Offensive line coach Josh Henson did not do a good job over the course of the full season. The line did improve in the second half of the season, but by that point, the Trojans had already lost three games, falling to Michigan and Minnesota before mid-October due to critical offensive line breakdowns.

There are two big components to these stories: First, USC will need to go to the portal for offensive line depth. Second, Lincoln Riley faces fresh questions and tensions connected to the decision to either retain or fire Josh Henson. Riley has to ask himself if this offensive line situation is good enough to retain Henson, who has struggled the past two years and did not put Miller Moss or Jayden Maiava in the best possible position to succeed in 2024. USC has lacked an elite offensive line. Riley has to be ruthlessly honest and make sure that if he does retain Henson, he will get the very best from his offensive line in a crucial 2025 season.

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Lincoln Riley challenges young USC offensive line to improve consistency

Lincoln Riley knows how central his offensive line is to a successful 2024 USC season.

USC football news is flowing from August camp.  All spring camp and during USC Media Day last month we hear offensive line coach Josh Henson talk about the need for someone to step up and show consistency at the right guard position. Coach Lincoln Riley discussed consistency in play from members of the right side of the USC offensive line here in week two of fall camp.

Riley explained after practice:

“The young guys are talented, inconsistent. It’ll be kind of this second half of camp of who can really take that jump from a consistency standpoint they all have talent to be able to potentially contribute but they are going to have to show more consistency to be able to trust them.”

“I mean there’s still definitely some position battles going on on the o line you know. As that plays out we’ve had a couple of guys banged up through camp. Nothing serious, but  there’s always positives and negatives.”

“There hasn’t been as much continuity. There’s a few guys that we wanted to see a little bit more, but we have had to move a lot of guys around — which has been a positive because you build like what’s going to happen in the season at some point and you build that experience.  So for the ones that have been healthy, it’s been a great thing, but excited to get those guys back and try to get some clarity on that as we get a little bit closer to the first game.”

Can Alani Noa, who started games for the Trojans as a true freshman in 2023 hold off the versatile veteran Gino Quinones or Noa’s 2023 freshmen classmates Micah Banuelos and Amos Talalele?  The battle for the right guard position will be one to watch as fall camp winds down.

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Lincoln Riley challenges veterans on USC offensive line to step up in 2024

Lincoln Riley needs Emmanuel Pregnon to evolve and perform this year.

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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