Alijah Vera-Tucker's decision to play this fall looks primed to pay off big

USC coach Clay Helton has had the opposite conversation with Trojans draft prospects plenty of times. He recounts vividly what he told quarterback Sam Darnold after the 2017 season, that as much as he'd like to have him around for another year his stock would never be higher and it probably made the most sense to move on to the NFL in that moment.

But Helton didn't feel that way about Alijah Vera-Tucker back in the fall, after the Pac-12 season had been belatedly revived while USC's top offensive lineman still maintained plans to opt-out and turn an early focus to his professional future.

In fact, Helton and the Trojans felt strongly that Vera-Tucker would be leaving a lot of money on the table with his first NFL contract if he were to sit out, so the coach and USC senior associate athletic director Brandon Sosna -- who has past experience in the NFL negotiating contracts and managing a salary cap -- decided to make this one of the program's most important recruiting pitches of the year.

"In this case, it was more about helping a young man be equipped with all the necessary information before making one of the most important decisions of his professional life and maybe his entire life, which fortunately happened to be an outcome that was also in the best interest of the football program," Sosna said.

There is that, too. USC badly needed Vera-Tucker to return and fill the void of departed left tackle Austin Jackson with no other obvious contingency plan on the roster. But as they would lay out over numerous phone calls and Zooms with Vera-Tucker and his family, Helton, Sosna and Co. believed that Vera-Tucker needed this final season with the Trojans just as much as the team needed him.

"There's situations like this one that you know in your heart that a young man has more value that's out there," Helton said. "And it's so important, you want to be at your highest value when you enter the NFL because nothing is guaranteed. You want your money on the front end, and sometimes that takes additional work and investment in yourself. At the end of the day, to be able to say to Alijah, 'Alijah, if I said that you could have a one-year contract for $12 million what would you say?' He said, 'Coach, that's pretty good.' And I said, 'Well, that's the difference in this decision is you're talking about the difference between being a top 15 pick and somewhere in the middle of the second round, that's a huge difference in money and are you willing to make that investment in six to seven games to get there?' ...

"I just felt it in my heart that anytime a young man is not at his top value yet that I express that to them because it's my belief. So there's sometimes you just have to look at their value and say this is [the peak]. Adoree' [Jackson] was that type of gentleman, Sam was that type of gentleman that you just knew they were as high as they could possibly go, and then there's those situations that you look at a guy in the second or third round and you go, gosh almighty, one more year to put himself in a premier [position] and really take care of him and his children's children."

In this case, they were right.

Vera-Tucker certainly helped the Trojans, solidifying the biggest uncertainty on the team and contributing greatly to a 5-1 season and Pac-12 championship game appearance. And in turn, just as Helton and Sosna pitched to him back in the fall with the help of some pro football connections and direct experience from the inside of NFL draft rooms, Vera-Tucker now stands to reap the benefits of his decision in a big way, widely projected to be a first-round NFL draft pick on Thursday night.

"The right thing ain't always easy but it's always right, and that was the right decision for him personally and it was a great decision for our football team," Helton said.

ESPN draft analyst Todd McShay projects Vera-Tucker as the No. 13 overall pick to the Los Angeles Chargers, while colleague Mel Kiper Jr. has the Trojans offensive lineman going as the 16th pick Thursday night to the New York Jets. Countless other mock drafts deviate slightly but further the consensus of the first-round projection.

"Vera-Tucker is my top-ranked guard, but he really came into his own while playing left tackle for the Trojans last season," Kiper wrote in his final mock draft.

That, in essence, was the pitch all along.

From the information Helton and Sosna had gathered through their NFL contacts on behalf of Vera-Tucker, they felt he was projected as a late second or perhaps third-round pick had he not played last fall. Essentially, he would have had one year as a starter (at left guard in 2019) followed by an opt-out year, or he could have two seasons as a starter with the added appeal of showing his versatility at left tackle as well.

Based on their feedback and Sosna's own experience in an NFL front office, having spent two years with the Cleveland Browns from 2017-18 while receiving a promotion to the role of salary cap and contract analyst, they wanted Vera-Tucker to understand how different those two narratives would be interpreted leading up to the draft.

"We all felt after getting the information that we didn't see him going past the second round, but we couldn't guarantee that he was going to be a first-round pick either and thought he was worthy of that," Helton recalled. "[We] presented that information not only to Alijah but his family, both sets of parents, and really gave them some education on not only where he fell but from a financial standpoint but what does a top 15 pick look like financially, what does a top 25 pick look like, what does a top 50 pick look like. And he was probably somewhere in the 50-70 range. We didn't see him going past that, but what is the difference from that second round to really competing and showing yourself as a top 25 pick and just educating him.

"Brandon has done those things in the NFL, working with contracts, so his knowledge really helped, being able to show Alijah and his family, hey, understand that year in and year out the top 25 picks in the draft have 100 percent guaranteed money but everything past that you start losing the guaranteed money. And showing him that, yes, this is your contract value but this is your actual contract value at the end of the day based on that percentage of what you're guaranteed."

USC had similar conversations with safety Talanoa Hufanga, who would return for the 2020 season and garner Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Year and All-American status. Not every player is as receptive, though -- some have their minds set on a decision and there's not a conversation to be had.

The Trojans weren't sure they could change Vera-Tucker's mind either, but he and his family were open to listening, and so the pitch began -- after some internal strategizing.

Helton would have consistent conversations with the player he had known since early in Vera-Tucker's time at Bishop O'Dowd High School in Oakland and both sets of his parents who were involved in this decision. Sosna would speak to his first-hand knowledge from his NFL years. And to reiterate the message from voices outside the program, they linked Vera-Tucker and his family up with former NFL executives to provide raw feedback about how he would be viewed and discussed in draft rooms, as things stood had he not played another season.

Meanwhile, USC also worked with Vera-Tucker to further alleviate any reservations he might have about the risks of returning, as he was able to set up an insurance policy against potential earnings should he sustain a serious injury.

Every angle was thought out and strategized and it was just a matter of presenting the most compelling case to the player.

"My role was specifically to provide Alijah and his family insights into the draft process from someone who has been through it on the other side and to educate on how rookie contracts are constructed with respect to draft position and guaranteed money," Sosna said. "It's intuitive for everyone that the higher you get drafted the more money you make, but there's nuance to the guaranteed dollars and ultimately it's the guarantees that are most important. ...

"It's a perfect representation of Alijah's professionalism that he embraced every opportunity to collect more information and gain different perspectives before he made his decision. I think Clay was a remarkable resource for Alijah and his family. I believe they appreciated the information sharing process tremendously. Obviously, we were very excited when Clay got the call that he decided to opt back in from purely a football perspective, but we also had a high degree of confidence that his draft stock would soar."

Helton remembers being in his office when Vera-Tucker made the call that he was going to return, letting his coach know a couple days before he'd publicly announce it on social media just before the start of the Trojans' fall camp.

"I was dang the happiest person in life. I knew what that meant not only for him but our football team," Helton said.

But the reality was that leading up to that call, those in the program were just as anxious about Vera-Tucker's decision as the fans, not truly knowing if the pitch was going to land enough for him to reverse a decision he had already made peace with while returning home to Oakland.

"I think we genuinely didn't know which direction it was going to go, and obviously in this particular case we collectively felt strongly that it was the right decision for him to come back," Sosna reiterated. "And that's not always the case. Sometimes a player contemplates leaving early for the draft when they still have eligibility, and you advise them to do that because it's the right thing to do for them. This particular situation had many different dimensions to it, but at the end of the day I think Alijah wanted to improve his draft position, wanted to prove he was better than the players draft ranking services had him lower than, and compete for a championship with his teammates -- and he was able to do all those things. And really the metrics on his 2020 performance are elite."

PFF graded Vera-Tucker at an elite level each of the last two years. At left guard in 2019, he finished with just 7 total pressures allowed (including only 1 sack) over 590 pass-protection snaps for an 87.9 pass-blocking grade, on a scale in which anything in the 80s is distinguished.

At left tackle in 2020, in the Trojans' limited six-game season, he allowed 8 pressures (4 sacks) over 305 pass-protection snaps for an 84.2 isolated pass-blocking grade, but 6 of those pressures and half of those sacks came in the Pac-12 championship game vs. Oregon as he played through a hamstring injury.

"Even though I was kind of injured and didn't practice all week, at the end of the day I just wanted to play in that game," Vera-Tucker said last month. "Obviously it's the Pac-12 championship, so I told coach there's no way I wasn't playing in that. ... I've always been a competitor, so I just feel I proved it even more."

That is precisely the mentality the Trojans were hoping to trigger back in the early fall.

"He's always been a competitor and at the end of the day he said, 'Coach, I believe I'm a top pick, I want to compete to be a first-round draft pick, that was my dream coming in here,'" Helton said.

For his part, Vera-Tucker also added that looking back, he does think playing that season -- even a limited six-game slate -- "raised my stock a lot."

Most every draft expert, self-appointed expert, reporter or simply fan with a keyboard believe that dream will indeed come true for Vera-Tucker on Thursday night.

Meanwhile, it's an example the USC football program will most certainly use moving forward as well, and the process is reflective on a broader scale of the growing importance of and priority on not just recruiting top talent but roster retention. Whether it's NFL draft prospects considering leaving early like Vera-Tucker, or the ever-growing number of players viewing the transfer portal as a freeway to better opportunities, the current athletics administration in concert with the coaching staff is honing an approach of being extremely detailed in creating individualized presentations of what it believes it can offer a player relative to their goals when these situations arise.

Again, Vera-Tucker wasn't the only such conversation that was had heading into last fall, and more took place after the season.

Helton underscored the value of having Sosna take such a hands-on role in such situations -- and specifically how his background proved an asset in the Vera-Tucker conversations.

Ultimately, though, both Helton and Sosna credit Vera-Tucker's openness to receive the information they were presenting, as they now all await the full fruits of that decision coming to bear Thursday night.

"Credit to him, credit to his family for listening, for taking in the information and then making the best decision for their family. And it's looking like, good Lord willing, it's going to pay off for them," Helton said. "I'm so happy for them."