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The story of USC‘s offense thus far this season would possibly greatest be instructed by beginning with the person who has performed solely 5 complete snaps. Aadyn Sleep-Dalton wears quantity 42, hails from Australia, and even when you’ve watched each USC sport this season, you might need missed him.
It will be straightforward to take action; by way of the Trojans’ three victories which have kicked off the Lincoln Riley period, the USC punter has had solely 5 punts, and three of them have been within the fourth quarter with the sport already properly in hand.
Twice on Saturday evening, Sleep-Dalton began to place his helmet on and creep onto the sector as USC’s offense confronted a fourth down close to midfield. However on each events, Riley went for the primary down, and Sleep-Dalton was referred to as off.
“I had the arrogance that we have been going to transform,” Riley stated after the sport, a win over Fresno State. “Actually, I had no hesitation.”
For a crew with a plethora of latest faces among the many offense in addition to the teaching workers, the one trait that seems to bind USC’s offense is that confidence. Whether or not it comes from almost 20 years of teaching, one season of enjoying in Riley’s system, or spending the offseason seeing what this mix of expertise and scheme can do in observe, each participant on that facet of the ball is overflowing with a sure bravado that is solely been emboldened by latest outcomes.
“We anticipate to attain each time we contact the ball,” vast receiver Jordan Addison stated. “That is the sort of offense we now have. We need to be sure we put up factors and hold our foot on their necks and hold going.”
Within the 45-17 win over the Bulldogs, the Trojans scored 40 or extra factors for the third straight sport and transformed all three fourth-down alternatives whereas scoring their ninth landing on 11 first-half drives this season. The 152 factors by way of the primary three video games is probably the most this system has scored in its three opening video games since 2005, when Reggie Bush and Matt Leinart helped USC rating 40 factors or extra in 9 of their 12 video games.
The hiring of an offensive-minded coach like Riley, whose offenses at Oklahoma have lived within the high 10 since he took over in 2017, meant one of many first priorities can be taking USC’s offense to a brand new degree after the crew went 4-8 final season and ranked sixty fifth within the nation offensively. Regardless of a brand new head coach and new gamers at beginning quarterback, operating again and vast receiver, the early returns look like extra becoming of an offense that is been enjoying collectively for years reasonably than one put collectively in lower than eight months, stitched collectively by transfers from across the nation and buttressed by a system that seemingly has the potential to raise each participant in addition to the whole unit.
“I feel with this crew, with this offense, we now have a limiteless ceiling,” operating again Travis Dye, who transferred from Oregon within the offseason, stated. “And I am keen to go discover it.”
IF THERE WAS ever an Air Raid bible created by the scheme’s forefathers and strengthened by the coaches it influences to this present day, a few of the guide’s commandments and proverbs would learn as such:
“Make the protection defend each inch of the sector”
“Belief your quarterback. However provided that you recruited the precise one.”
“Do not let your degree of expertise dampen the system’s largest benefit: Keep aggressive.”
Such a guide must be written, a minimum of partly, by Hal Mumme, who is taken into account one of many godfathers of the Air Raid offense after he applied it at each the highschool and faculty ranges in Texas and a number of other different packages across the nation. Mumme’s philosophy went on to affect Mike Leach, who was his understudy at Iowa Wesleyan, and later Riley when he grew to become a pupil assistant — and finally a large receivers coach — below Leach at Texas Tech.
By the point Riley landed at East Carolina as Ruffin McNeill’s offensive coordinator, he had not simply embraced the system, however started including his personal twists. He continued this method as he grew to become Oklahoma‘s offensive coordinator in 2015, and when he took over as head coach in 2017, Baker Mayfield, Kyler Murray and Jalen Hurts thrived in his system — with Mayfield and Murray each profitable the Heisman Trophy and occurring to be No. 1 total picks within the NFL draft.
“The very first thing you gotta do is choose the precise quarterback,” Mumme instructed ESPN in a telephone interview. “And that is one thing our guys operating that system have at all times been in a position to do properly.”
Up to now, the Air Raid had been used as a mechanism to shrink the hole between groups with fewer expertise and people with extra. Because the monitor report of Riley’s system grew, the system itself attracted expertise in addition to enhanced it. Briefly, that cycle created a perennial contender, even when Oklahoma by no means received a nationwide title.
To Mumme, Riley’s groups at Oklahoma have been a few of the greatest variations of what the Air Raid might seem like with an exorbitant quantity of expertise. USC, with its clean canvas and basis for already being a recruiting powerhouse, presents an identical, a extra tantalizing, actuality. To not point out the actual fact the switch portal allowed Riley to hand-pick gamers who match his system to fabricate success instantly.
“In the event you take the system and implement it at a spot like USC, the place you are going to have that rather more expertise, each play within the guide turns into simpler,” Mumme stated.
So far as what differentiates Riley’s model of the Air Raid from its predecessors or different coaches operating the system, Mumme praises Riley for not simply adapting the scheme to his liking, however being able and willingness to constantly design and try explosive performs.
“I do not assume it is essentially that he is higher at doing that,” Mumme stated. “It is simply that he seizes the second. It is not that it is higher. It is simply that he is keen to do it. Not everyone seems to be.”
Aggression is essential to the Air Raid, in response to Mumme, but much more in order the expertise of the crew improves. Whereas different coaches would possibly coast on such expertise or fall again on it by taking a extra conservative method in playcalling, Mumme sees Riley double down as a substitute.
“Whenever you take a man like Lincoln and you set him in a spot the place he can get the expertise degree higher than most of their opponents, reasonably than develop into conservative, they simply hold including to it after which utilizing the expertise,” Mumme stated. “That is the way you get these explosive performs.”
USC is averaging 8 yards per play this season, ok for fourth within the nation, and it has 5 cross completions of a minimum of 40 yards, tied for sixth most within the FBS.
Mumme factors out that a few of the ease with which USC has applied Riley’s model of the Air Raid must be attributable to the truth that final season’s offensive coordinator, Graham Harrell — who performed quarterback at Texas Tech whereas Riley was there — was operating a model of the system as properly, albeit not as successfully. Nonetheless, receivers similar to Gary Bryant Jr. and Tahj Washington, who performed at USC final season, have been open in regards to the truth they really feel like they’re being utilized far more successfully below Riley’s system. Even offensive linemen are converts.
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Jordan Addison makes catch for 22-yard TD
“I feel once we put in it within the spring, it was similar to, ‘What? What is going on on?'” stated offensive lineman Andrew Vorhees, referring to a display screen play that allowed Addison to attain a landing towards Stanford. “We noticed it come to fruition, and it was fairly spectacular to look at. However yeah, we belief Coach Riley and his experience. That man has a wealth of data for his age. It is past unimaginable. So we actually purchase into that.”
IF RILEY WAS was going to repeat and paste a model of his system at a brand new place like USC, he wasn’t simply going to wish expertise. He was going to wish a cornerstone, a second coach on the sector, and a pacesetter. In different phrases, he was going to wish Caleb Williams.
As one Energy 5 coach who has run totally different variations of the Air Raid put it, greater than half of the system’s effectiveness depends on the quarterback, and by extension, the connection between the coach and that quarterback.
“It is at all times been a quarterback offense,” Mumme stated. “I’ve at all times given them the power to verify off from objective line to objective line and many of the guys that run this have executed the identical factor.”
With Williams below heart, the Trojans’ offense is averaging 10.2 yards per cross try, which ranks thirteenth within the nation. Williams is one in every of solely two Energy 5 gamers this season with a number of completions on passes thrown over 40 yards downfield, and his QBR of 93.1 is thus far the fourth greatest in all of FBS.
Mumme stated the most effective model of the offense is when a coach feels comfy sufficient taking his fingers off the wheel and letting the quarterback act and react primarily based on what he’s seeing on the sector. Getting Williams to observe Riley to the West Coast was essential, however watching them work together now, ending one another’s sentences in information conferences or attempting to present one another credit score for performs or audibles they referred to as in sport, just like the one which opened up a landing run for Dye towards Stanford, it is easy to see they click on in a method that’s distinctive.
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Travis Dye crosses objective line for 27-yard landing
“We’ll be in conditions the place I am unable to even hear the sideline in any respect, however they’ve some sort of connection,” Dye stated of the connection between Riley and Williams. “[Riley] provides one little whistle and [Williams] is wanting over actual fast, and I am like, ‘OK, he is over there enjoying Madden with Caleb.’ They’re actually in tune with one another.”
Williams stated the communication between the 2 has develop into second nature over the course of a yr and a half of working collectively. When requested what precisely has allowed the bond to develop, Williams merely smiled and stated that the 2 have “been by way of a pair issues collectively.”
It additionally helped that Williams, like Riley, might do some recruiting of his personal. Williams’ arrival set off the chain response that led to Addison making his method from Pittsburgh to Los Angeles, giving USC the most effective receiver within the nation.
“Taking part in on this offense now’s method higher than I anticipated,” Addison stated. “I am simply having enjoyable.”
In contrast to Riley and Williams, Addison and Williams began working collectively solely 4 months in the past. Regardless of each rising up within the Washington, D.C., space, the 2 by no means performed collectively or towards one another in highschool. But from the second Addison touched down in Los Angeles, he and Williams related — on and off the sector.
“They’ve had actually simply fall camp to work collectively and you may see that is sort of all they want,” operating again and Stanford switch Austin Jones stated.
If there had been any doubt about Addison flourishing in an offense with a loaded vast receiver corps, the Biletnikoff Award winner has thus far made positive his standing as one of many high wideouts within the sport stays. By means of three video games, Addison and Williams have related for 5 touchdowns, placing Addison on tempo to interrupt USC’s single-season receiving landing report of 16.
The expertise at USC appears to supply Riley the perfect instruments for his offense, which has thus far been as balanced (94 cross performs to 101 run performs) because it has been a spotlight reel. Between using weapons similar to Addison and Mario Williams vertically and horizontally whereas establishing the run sport with Dye and Jones, Riley has been in a position to implement his model of the Air Raid.
“With these gamers in that system, you are going to have the ability to put on out defenses quick,” Mumme stated. “I am positive it is what went into Lincoln’s pondering when he determined to go there.”
WHAT HAS BEEN evident thus far is that USC appears to have discovered the proper mix of expertise and scheme, and it has been in a position to run on all cylinders instantly. By including gamers similar to Addison, Dye, Mario Williams, Brenden Rice and Jones to the connection cast by Riley and Caleb Williams final season in Oklahoma, the offense has transitioned efficiently from Norman to Los Angeles with out a lot of a hitch.
Loads of questions nonetheless stay, together with the depth at left deal with after Courtland Ford was sidelined towards Fresno State with an damage and Bobby Haskins was banged up following that sport. Past the scheme, safety is the anchor that may permit Williams to proceed to show the area out and in of the pocket into his private playground and maybe vault himself into the Heisman Trophy dialog.
USC’s protection, nonetheless, stays unpredictable. It has created sufficient havoc to maintain opponents at bay by the use of turnovers (10 this season), in addition to a handful of stops within the purple zone. A bend-but-don’t-break technique will not maintain up ceaselessly, however with an offense this potent, it might final some time, or a minimum of sufficient to win loads of shootouts.
“We’re attempting to get to the purpose the place each drive is six [points],” stated tight finish Malcolm Epps. “And all of us really feel like we now have the offensive guys to have the ability to do this.”
Harder matchups await, together with this week towards Oregon State, however as Jones put it Saturday evening after dashing for over 100 yards alongside Dye, “the one protection that we really feel like can cease [this offense] is ourselves.”
In the midst of the primary half of USC’s sport in Palo Alto, with the Trojans main 35-14, one NFL scout contained in the press field was heard taking inventory of what Williams & Co. have been doing on the sector.
“In the event that they’re sensible,” the scout stated, “each child in California goes to need to play in that offense.”
That’s, everybody besides punters.