First-and-10: The factors that could spur a USC football revival this fall

With the first practice of training camp only hours away from formally launching the 2019 season for the Trojans, there are still too many X-factors and unknowns to count in trying to forecast how the upcoming five months will unfold.

After all, who picked USC to go 5-7 at this time last year?

But there are tangible reasons for optimism that this team could indeed turn in a season more in line with the standards and expectations of this proud program.

With that said, here’s the first First-and-10 of the 2019 season -- a look at 10 factors that’ll go a long way toward shaping a much different fall for the Trojans.

The revamped USC offense has been perhaps the biggest talking point for the team since the end of last season, from the rollercoaster ride of Kliff Kingsbury’s month-long tenure to the eventual hiring of Graham Harrell.

The previous offensive scheme under Tee Martin was unimaginative and ineffective, plagued by ugly play calls, inconsistency and questionable personnel decisions -- all leading to the coordinator’s dismissal and the search for a new face to modernize the Trojans offense.

Harrell, who’s now the third offensive coordinator USC has had in the last year, looks like he might just be capable of pulling it off. USC boasts one of the top receiver rotations in the country with a deep variety of supremely talented pass catchers who can fill every role necessary for an offense.

Harrell’s pseudo-Air-Raid offense -- even if nobody is quite sure what to call it -- will look to maximize their abilities, finding creative ways to get those playmakers in space with the ball in their hands (“looking for grass,” as he calls it), and letting loose their athleticism for opportunities to stretch the field in the vertical passing game. The response from players has been overwhelmingly positive, with most circling back to explain that the new offense is simply much easier to grasp and allows them to go full speed with ease.

It's not hard to see all that adding up to many more yards and points.

However, Harrell doesn’t plan to lean exclusively on the passing game to move the chains -- hence the hesitancy to describe this as true Air Raid. He (and head coach Clay Helton) have insisted on the running game being an important part of his system, and the Trojans have a very talented group of backs that seem capable of carrying that load.

On paper, it all looks well and good. And if Harrell’s offense matches in execution how it's been described and touted by Helton and players, the Trojans might just have something truly special.

Maligned as he was, Martin was certainly not the sole source of the Trojans' struggles on offense last season. Quarterback JT Daniels shoulders a considerable share of that blame, turning in a less-than-ideal freshman debut that featured both flashes of the talent that made him a 5-star recruit and a plethora of mistakes that too often masked those flashes.

From the early season onwards, Daniels showed a penchant for poor decision-making, as well as seemingly lacking the consistent arm strength to hit deep sideline routes and vertical throws routinely.

A lot of that can be chalked up to his youth -- it’s unfair to expect an 18-year-old to step up to the plate as the starting quarterback for a program like USC and deliver at a high level right away. The jitters and shortcomings of a young QB are to be expected -- it's foolish to disregard that. Yet what was most concerning about Daniels’ debut season was the apparent lack of progress he made throughout the year.

The mistakes made early in the fall were the same made in the closing stages of the season. There just wasn’t enough visible growth from him over those three months.

Worrying as that may be for some, the fact is that Daniels is still only 19; one year of stagnation doesn’t mean he’s incapable of taking the next step. With the simplified offense Harrell brings and its potential to make the game easier for Daniels, the young signal-caller could easily have a breakout year. The success of the “Air Raid” depends very much on him doing so.

In an ESPN piece published last month, USC was crowned “Wide Receiver U” as the best producer of college talent at the position since the dawn of the BCS era, and fittingly enough this current group of Trojans pass catchers look like they might indeed be among the best in the nation.

The depth chart at receiver is absolutely stacked, returning all three top targets from last year along with veteran Velus Jones, high-upside sophomore Devon Williams and the addition of highly-touted freshmen talents.

Despite his slow start last year, Michael Pittman (41 catches for 758 yards and 6 TDs) put on a show throughout the latter stretch of the season, even with the struggles of the rest of the offense. He might be the most purely gifted receiver on the roster, and his continued improvement definitely puts him in the argument to be one of college football’s best for the upcoming season.

Fellow veteran Tyler Vaughns (58-674-6) is one of the best possession receivers in the conference, and sophomore Amon-Ra St. Brown (60-750-3) can be as dangerous as anyone in the FBS, only yet scratching the surface of what he can be.

Williams, Jones and freshmen John Jackson III, Kyle Ford, Drake London and Munir McClain fill out the depth chart with an overabundance of talent -- and that’s without considering the (unlikely) possibility of 5-star freshman Bru McCoy being ruled eligible to play this fall following his roundtrip voyage through the transfer portal to Texas and back.

Last season saw a woeful misutilization of the team’s best unit. Under Harrell’s watch, that seems unlikely to be the case again. This group has the ability to bully secondaries and completely take over games. They might make this one of the most fun college offenses to watch if they can live up to their billing.

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