After USC's Wednesday morning practice, coach Lincoln Riley addressed the competition at right guard, the progress of quarterback Jayden Maiava and defensive tackle Kobe Pepe, redshirt freshman Elijah Paige's emergence into a starter at left tackle and more.
Watch the full video here and scroll down for a complete transcript of his comments.
Full transcript of Lincoln Riley's comments Wednesday:
Can Carlon Jones earn a role as a true freshman?
"It’s definitely realistic. He’s not a guy obviously that was here early, but that’s definitely not a prerequisite. It helps. But there’s certainly plenty of examples of guys that come in and are able to contribute. All of your defensive linemen coming in, this massive change in terms of how we play, body types, styles, all that, it’s not like we’ve been recruiting or building to that necessarily for a bunch of years stacked up. I think him coming in, all of our young guys are going to have a chance to come contribute. With said, all of our returners, our guys here in the spring, made some massive gains, both in terms of body type and knowledge of the system. They’ve got to come in and prove that you want to invest in them earlier. But Carlon is talented. He’s a big guy. He’s learning fast. Going from high school to getting coached at the level he’s being coached at right now is a big difference. But he’s progressing and you can certainly see some of the talent with him and our younger defensive linemen.
Are you restructuring the staff at all with NCAA staff limits no longer in place?
"We have a few things internally that we’ve restructured and are using people in different ways. As those come about or we get to the right point, we’ll announce those. It’s nice. It’s kind of like, finally. The NCAA has been behind the times so far on that rule, so it’s great that you now can use the people on your staff how you feel is the best way. A lot of people taking more active roles, especially some of the guys that are more experienced in the QC world for us that are really taking active roles on all three sides. We will have a few title changes and some shifts that’ll happen, some before the season, some after. But yeah it already feels a lot different in the way we’re using our staff."
So, definitely a special teams coordinator?
"(Laughs) Yes, there’s a special teams coordinator."
