Tag: Josh Henson

How many wins does Lincoln Riley need in 2024 to have a successful season?

How can USC reach its goals, and what do we need to see from this team more than anything else in 2024?

On the Conquest Call-In Show, a weekly caller-driven YouTube show on Friday nights at 6 p.m. Pacific time, John from Detroit chimed in. He said that USC would need to go at least 9-3 in its first season in the Big Ten to be successful.

I explained to John that I don’t have a number. I just want to see measureable and drastic improvement on both sides of the line of scrimmage for USC. Lincoln Riley has put together an outstanding staff with new defensive coordinator D’Anton Lynn and defensive line coach Eric Henderson joining defensive ends coach Sean Nua. This new staff will try to fix the issue that plagued USC’s defensive line last year. On paper, Lynn was able to turn UCLA’s dismal 2022 defense into a top five defense in 2023. He completely changed the Bruins’ defense in just one offseason, so the Trojans’ hopes ride on him replicating that feat here at USC. His plan at UCLA was to install his defense methodically in the spring and fall, building the fundamentals of the defense early and slowly. This would ensure a deep understanding of the basics of the scheme, allowing him to add additional wrinkles as the season progresses.

The addition of Isaiah Raikes, 313 pounds of quick-twitch athleticism in the middle, and the defensive line room adding 340 pounds in the offseason gives the Trojans the ability to exert the physicality that new defensive line coach Eric Henderson is stressing in the offseason.  The added size and attention to fundamentals from Henderson will be tested early in the season as USC faces LSU and Michigan in their first three games of 2024.

Offensively, Josh Henson remains the offensive line coach for the third year at USC. Clay Helton’s offensive line coach, Clay McGuire, had done a great job developing the line and leaving Henson a great foundation to work with, but there was no depth. The addition of Bobby Haskins in 2022 allowed USC’s veteran line to be a strength on the team in an 11-win campaign.

However, the Trojans were unable to overcome the loss of their three-year starting center, Brett Neilon, and All-America left guard Andrew Vorhees; the unit never gelled in 2023. The football team faced significant challenges due to injuries, which included multiple key players. Courtland Ford departed the team through the transfer portal, Ethan White, a transfer from Florida, was unable to join the team due to a medical retirement, and Gino Quinones suffered a season-ending injury early in the season.  Relying on multiple transfers who didn’t pan out created a less-than-ideal situation. The line was plagued by miscommunication and protection breakdowns throughout the year.

In 2024, the big and physical 2023 offensive line class has had a year of collegiate weight training, nutrition, and coaching from Henson. Two of the members of that 2023 class, Alani Noa and Elijah Paige, got some starts last year, but this unit has developed together and is expected to play significant roles. Micah Banuelos, who is on his way back from injury; Amos Talalele; and Tobias Raymond all look to push for starting roles in 2024. The left side of the line with Paige at tackle and Emmanuel Pregnon at guard seems to be set. Lincoln Riley and Henson have selected Jonah Monheim to anchor the offensive line at center, but there are questions on the right side.  The Trojans will absolutely need someone to step up and take those roles for USC to call 2024 a success.

 

Visit our friends at Fighting Irish Wire, Buffaloes Wire, and Ducks Wire. Follow our newest sites, UW Huskies Wire and UCLA Wire.

USC OL coach Josh Henson explains what new center Jonah Monheim must learn before 2024 season

We asked Josh Henson about Jonah Monheim’s progress and evolution at center, a new position for him on the USC offensive line.

USC football’s fourth practice of the spring came alive with quotes from notable people inside the program. Trojans Wire was able to ask offensive line coach Josh Henson about offensive lineman Jonah Monheim. Monheim played the entire 2023 regular season anchoring Caleb Williams’ blind side at left tackle.  According to Pro Football Focus, he would be the third-ranked returning offensive tackle in the country this season. However, Henson and the Trojans need him at center after Justin Dedich, the versatile three-year starter at guard and center, ran out of eligibility.  

Monheim played right guard and right tackle in 2022, then he was asked to move to left tackle when the line didn’t come together as expected in the offseason. Monheim was draft-eligible after his redshirt sophomore year, but he elected to return to USC to put together film for scouts by playing on the interior, where he projects as a pro.

The move will be pivotal for the Trojans as they enter their first season in the Big Ten. Monheim will have three spring ball journeys and two seasons in Lincoln Riley’s offense, so he is a great candidate to make the crucial line calls expected of the center during games.

I asked Henson for his early impressions of Monheim moving to center this spring, what his strengths are, and where he needs to improve.

“Well, his strengths are that he is extremely intelligent,” said Henson. “He picks things up so fast; he’s a very fast learner. What he’s going to adjust to, interior wise, is just playing with lower pad level, hips low, elbow in, hands inside – all the things that when you are playing close to someone, that are bigger people, snap after snap, it’s a lot more of a power game on the interior than it is a finesse game. But so far, I would give him a really good grade. I would say the first four practices … he’s trending in the right direction.”

Henson and the Trojans will need Monheim’s versatility and quick learning as he acclimates to the new position. The Trojans need this adjustment to be seamless in order for the offensive line to be ready for September. USC faces LSU in Las Vegas to open the season. The Trojans will be in Ann Arbor to face the defending national champion Michigan Wolverines on September 21.

Visit our friends at Fighting Irish Wire, Buffaloes Wire, and Ducks Wire. Follow our newest sites, UW Huskies Wire and UCLA Wire.

Josh Henson isn’t necessarily USC’s worst position coach, but he’s the one with the most to prove

Josh Henson has a lot riding on the 2024 season, and USC fans are hoping he will be up to the task.

The USC Trojans and Lincoln Riley have dramatically changed their defensive coaching staff. They did not make big changes to the offensive coaching staff.

Josh Henson was terrific in 2022 at USC. He mixed and match combinations on the offensive line and found good solutions which helped the Trojans win 11 games. In 2023, the journey was much more difficult. Henson struggled to find those same combinations, largely because it became apparent how badly USC missed Andrew Vorhees, Brett Neilon, and Bobby Haskins from the 2022 roster.

Henson has had one elite year and one mediocre year at USC. In 2024, he needs to move the needle in the direction of elite.

USC should have a much-improved defense in 2024, given all the great staffing hires by Lincoln Riley. The credentials of the assistant coaches on that side of the ball are considerable. Josh Henson needs to become a rock-star assistant who is spoken of in the same breath as D’Anton Lynn, Matt Entz, and Doug Belk.

We talked more about Henson at The Voice of College Football:

Visit our friends at Fighting Irish Wire, Buffaloes Wire, and Ducks Wire.

Josh Henson needs to land five-star offensive linemen as USC tries to undo Clay Helton’s damage

Josh Henson has to prove himself in 2024.

The reality of the situation at USC is layered regarding the program’s inability to land elite offensive linemen on the recruiting trail. On one hand, offensive line coach Josh Henson isn’t stacking one five-star recruit after another, but on the other hand, Clay Helton did so much damage to this program over several years that Henson can’t be expected to immediately fix everything.

Henson will be entering his third year on staff in 2024. In Year 3 of a coach’s tenure, we need to begin to see better results. In Year 3, the arguments about being hamstrung by the previous coaching staff aren’t as easy to sell. The clock is definitely ticking for Henson in his stewardship of the Trojans’ offensive line.

Remember when USC missed out on Josh Conerly and Francis Mauigoa?

We wrote this in 2022:

“The Trojans lost to Oregon for Josh Conerly. Now they have lost to the coach who led Oregon last year but then moved across the country to a new home.

“Mario Cristobal and the Miami Hurricanes beat out USC, Tennessee, and a few other schools for five-star offensive lineman Francis Mauigoa. The decision was announced on Monday afternoon, giving Miami yet another win over USC in 2022, the previous one being the NCAA Tournament first round.”

USC has plainly struggled to land five-star offensive linemen in recent years, but that drought was mostly a Clay Helton problem. Josh Henson is tasked with making sure Helton’s problem doesn’t become a regular fact of existence under Lincoln Riley.

He certainly has some work to do.

While USC sorts itself out on defense with so many staff transitions, Henson needs to give his offensive line — and the Trojans’ offense — high-level stability. It’s why offensive line recruiting and player development are central to the USC project right now.

Visit our friends at Fighting Irish Wire, Buffaloes Wire, and Ducks Wire.

USC offensive line coach Josh Henson comes under fire after UCLA bullies Trojans

Henson had a bad year and should not be guaranteed a job heading into 2024.

The collapse of USC football this season, made complete with a blowout loss to UCLA on Saturday, is leading USC fans to ask all sorts of questions — appropriate questions — about this coaching staff.

Was there a single assistant coach who performed well this season? If you asked USC fans, the one assistant coach who did a reasonably good job — though not great — is defensive line coach Shaun Nua. That is primarily because Bear Alexander really did live up to the billing. He played hard and well for the vast majority of the season. He was a defensive transfer who gave the Trojans real production instead of being a bust.

He was the exception, not the rule, as was Nua on this coaching staff.

Most position coaches struck out this year, as did the transfers the coaching staff brought to USC.

One coach who had a very bad year, magnified by this no-show against UCLA, was offensive line coach Josh Henson. His offensive line transfers did not show up. He didn’t maintain the high standards set by last year’s offensive line with Andrew Vorhees, Brett Neilon, and Bobby Haskins.

USC fans were right to skewer Henson during and after the Trojans’ brutal loss. This is another assistant coach whose job should not be safe. Let’s go into the details here:

Gino Quinones injury puts pressure on USC OL coach Josh Henson

When Courtland Ford and Andrew Vorhees got hurt in 2022, Henson reacted well. He’ll face that same challenge now.

The USC Trojans didn’t have a whole lot of offensive line depth in 2022. When Andrew Vorhees got hurt, the margin for error became a lot smaller for this position group.

Offensive line coach Josh Henson had to mix and match players and reshuffle them to get the best possible results. Against Utah — a really good team — USC didn’t have enough answers on the offensive line in the Pac-12 Championship Game. The Trojans were able to manage, however, in games against Arizona, Cal, Colorado, and UCLA, with Vorhees playing through pain against Notre Dame and helping USC thrive against the Irish.

Henson moved Bobby Haskins — probably the unsung hero of the 2022 offensive line — from one position to another. Mason Murphy got some playing time when Vorhees was hurt. The offensive line held together in the Pac-12 regular season.

Now Henson has more reshuffling to do with the injury to Gino Quinones. The loss of the backup left guard means the Trojans — who have been rotating bodies up front in an attempt to get player evaluations while also keeping guys fresh — have to re-order their rotations.

This game against Stanford will obviously involve new backup options at left guard, but it also invites the possibility for a re-think of the backup roles for the healthy linemen in the unit. The Trojans still don’t want to overextend their starters in a game they should be able to win comfortably, but now Henson faces a fresh set of (unwelcome) choices. Let’s see how he and Lincoln Riley put the pieces together on Saturday night.

Catch all of Ducks Wire’s Pac-12 team overviews for the 2023 season:

Arizona — Arizona State — California — Colorado — Oregon State  — Stanford — UCLA — USC — Utah — Washington — Washington State

Coaching graduate seminar: USC OL coach Josh Henson goes deep

If you love football and you love coaching, Josh Henson offered some superb insights. This is the good stuff:

You’re reading this article because you’re interested in USC football and you enjoy college football. You therefore crave detailed insights from coaches on the way the sausage is made. How are players coached to be great? How are position units and teams taught to function as a unit? How are players coached not just in terms of technique, but in terms of cultivating toughness, discipline, effort, resilience, and poise?

USC offensive line coach Josh Henson went deep into the weeds and provided a layered description of coaching to 247Sports. It’s a thoughtful view of how coaches try to make sure players are prepared for the full rigors of a football season.

“We’ve been trying to go longer drives, but it’s still when you’re on the fourth or fifth long drive of the game and you get tired and you’re exhausted, will you pull it out of yourself and bring it on play No. 70 in the same way as you bring it on play 2, 3, and 4?” Henson asked. “That is a little bit of an unknown. You stretch yourself to those places in practice. You try to put yourself there, but nothing simulates that like a game. So anyway, we’ll see where we’re at. I think we’ve made progress here. I’m still curious to see where we’re at in a game.”

That first game is Saturday against San Jose State at 5 p.m. Pacific time in the Los Angeles Coliseum.

[lawrence-auto-related count=1 tag=696092282]

Another one! USC, Josh Henson land four-star OL from Florida

#USC gets yet another Clearwater, Fla., prospect and continues to gain recruits from SEC country.

The recruits just keep on coming. Lincoln Riley tweeted out the Fight On! emoji on Sunday, which told us that another commitment was on the way. That commitment was finally revealed Tuesday at lunchtime.

Jason Zandamela, a four-star offensive lineman from Clearwater Academy in Florida, committed to the Trojans. Offensive line coach Josh Henson has another high-quality lineman to work with when the Trojans begin their new era in the Big Ten Conference.

Zandamela joins safety Jarvis Boatwright as a Clearwater prospect. The Trojans get a second player from the state of Florida, having already gained multiple prospects from the state of Georgia. USC has some California-based prospects in its growing 2024 class, but if you have been keeping tabs at our recruiting tracker, you will see that USC is getting recruits from all corners of the country with the exception of — interestingly enough — the Midwest, which is the heart of the Big Ten geographical footprint.

It will be fascinating to see how much more recruiting momentum USC can generate in these last few weeks of June. The recent official visit weekend and Golden Hour festivities were a huge hit with recruits.

[lawrence-auto-related count=1 tag=696092289]

Lincoln Riley, Josh Henson land OL Emmanuel Pregnon in transfer portal

#USC lands the coveted Wyoming transfer and fills a crucial need along its offensive front. Another huge portal score.

Sunday, USC landed Bear Alexander, the top-ranked available player in the spring window of the 2023 college football transfer portal.

Wednesday morning, the Trojans and Lincoln Riley landed former Wyoming offensive lineman Emmanuel Pregnon, the No. 2-ranked available player in the spring window of the portal.

Lincoln Riley is pretty good at this whole transfer portal thing, dontcha think?

It’s another big get for the Trojans, who needed some reinforcements on their offensive line after Courtland Ford transferred out of the program and Ethan White — an incoming transfer from Florida — had to decommit due to health problems.

In 72 hours, USC has significantly improved its quality of line play, getting bigger and tougher at the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball. We know the Trojans have skilled playmakers on offense. We know the Men of Troy have speed and talent at receiver and running back. It’s all about having an offensive line which can protect Caleb Williams, and having enough depth to withstand injuries when they occur.

Getting Pregnon builds back depth on the offensive line and significantly reduces anxieties about what the offensive line can achieve this season.

[mm-video type=video id=01gyz1x9cpsn3h414hej playlist_id=none player_id=01f5k5y2jb3twsvdg4 image=https://images2.minutemediacdn.com/image/upload/video/thumbnail/mmplus/01gyz1x9cpsn3h414hej/01gyz1x9cpsn3h414hej-43f6c8b33281558908dc66038c9d32a5.jpg]

[lawrence-auto-related count=1 tag=696090378]

How Twitter reacted to Notre Dame-USC: Trojans side

Lot of happy people in Los Angeles and beyond.

If you’re a USC fan, you have to be feeling high and mighty right about now. The Trojans’ 38-27 win over Notre Dame meant a lot of things. It snapped a skid over their biggest rival, and it provided more Caleb Williams fodder for the Heisman Trophy voters. On top of that, this win, coupled with LSU’s loss to Texas A&M, put them in position to make the College Football Playoff provided they win the Pac-12 title game.

The Trojans are nationally relevant for the first time in years, and their fans will tell you it was worth the wait. They already are prepared to induct Williams into their Heisman quarterback club alongside Matt Leinart and Carson Palmer. Even with the stiff competition the playoff is sure to have, the confidence for both the Trojans and their supporters has to be through the roof. After reading these tweets, it’s hard to think otherwise: