USC-Rutgers notebook: Trojans’ secondary hit with alarming rash of injuries
LOS ANGELES — The mask of steel D’Anton Lynn wears pregame never wavers, a constant emotional barometer through the tumult of USC’s 2024 season, and yet the situation he faced on Friday night at the Coliseum was particularly daunting.
On Thursday, head coach Lincoln Riley told media on a Zoom that USC was “hopeful” to have starting cornerbacks Jacobe Covington and Jaylin Smith, and safety Kamari Ramsey, all of whom were dinged up. But a short week posed a challenge with USC faced with one less day of preparation and one fewer set of reps with Rutgers looming on Friday. And when players trotted out in pads for warm-ups a couple hours pregame, Covington and Smith and Ramsey were absent.
What’s more: starting nickel Greedy Vance Jr. was in sweats. What’s more: true-freshman corner Marcelles Williams, a standout buried on the depth chart, was in sweats. Suddenly, USC was down four starting members of its secondary against Rutgers, and a key depth piece.
“Occasionally, you get the rare seasons where it feels like your lineup stays the same the whole way through, and you’re able to develop a lot of continuity and build,” Riley said on Thursday. “That happens some years, and it doesn’t some years.”
“It hasn’t really happened for us, and that’s OK. You gotta be able to adjust.”
It’s been a brutal season, indeed, for the injury bug on USC’s defense. These Trojans already came in with key linebacker Eric Gentry and defensive end Anthony Lucas ruled out for the season, and when defensive tackle Nate Clifton exited in the first quarter, it marked seven — seven — of USC’s erstwhile starters who were missing from the Coliseum turf Friday against the Scarlet Knights.
“You’d love to go through it and have minimal injuries, very consistent lineups,” Riley said Thursday. “That’s definitely an advantage, but that’s obviously not in our control.”
“What is in our control is finding a way to put a good product out there each week, and find different skillsets and adapt.”
They were at least in better position to adapt with the secondary, on Friday night, than at any other area on the roster. On paper, USC’s cornerbacks and safeties came into this fall as the program’s deepest position groups, pushing transfers like John Humphrey and DeCarlos Nicholson to inconsistent roles behind a bevy of entrenched starters.
Humphrey and Nicholson were sorely needed against Rutgers, though, with Humphrey coming up with a massive pass-breakup in the end zone on Rutgers’ first drive. Lynn went with a unique look in Ramsey and Vance Jr.’s absence, meanwhile, starting redshirt-sophomore Zion Branch and veteran Bryson Shaw at safety, with incumbent safety Akili Arnold starting at the nickel.
Freddie Freeman makes a metaphysical appearance at the Coliseum
Five miles northeast, a crack that’d go down in Los Angeles Dodgers lore erupted over the Chavez Ravine.
Five miles southwest, a slowly-trickling Coliseum crowd erupted with a sudden roar, the aftershocks of Freddie Freeman’s grand slam reverberating throughout Southern California on Friday night.
A couple days earlier, USC head coach Lincoln Riley professed his disdain for Friday-night college football games in Los Angeles. Perfectly understandable, given the competition on one of the most loaded slates in recent Southern California memory: Dodgers-Yankees in the first game of the World Series at Dodger Stadium, Lakers-Suns at the Crypt, even Mater Dei-St. John Bosco in a high school showdown in Santa Ana. And USC’s crowd was certainly thin on Friday, in the first quarter, before slowly trickling in in the second frame.
But it provided a shining moment in Los Angeles sports lore, as Freeman went yard as the Coliseum went briefly silent Friday night, a pause in action before a Rutgers kickoff. And collectively, tens of thousands at another iconic LA venue hummed, the loudest they’d been all night amid USC-Rutgers, a win for LA in one of multiple West Coast-East Coast showdowns on the night.