Tajwar's First-and-10: The key takeaways from USC's season opener

This time last year, if someone said a 3-star freshman quarterback would be leading the offense only two quarters into the season, it would have been hard to believe. Well, here we are. Daniels is out indefinitely, Jack Sears is currently somewhere in the transfer portal and the reins of the offense now belong to Slovis.

It is perhaps unfair to continue to refer to Slovis as a 3-star QB. He's a very talented thrower of the football --everyone who’s watched him play since the spring will concur. He’s accurate and composed, with a good natural feel for moving around the pocket. When allowed to let it rip in practice, Slovis had days where he carved the defense up and down the field. He also had days where he looked like what he is – a freshman. No one could truly know what a gameday Slovis would look like, and even with two quarters of unexpected experience, it feels like we still don’t.

Slovis had only 8 pass attempts compared that to the whopping 34 Daniels had in the first half alone. Of those throws, one was a checkdown for a loss, one was a deep bomb that ended up picked off on an apparent miscommunication with Michael Pittman, one was a gorgeous 41 yard deep ball to Tyler Vaughns and the rest were short underneath routes or incompletions. It's hard to make a true evaluation off that sample size.

For what it’s worth, though, Slovis responded well to pressure, moved well in the pocket and avoiding a couple of sacks. Overall, though, he's still largely an unknown. Stanford will be a very different test- and he’ll go into that game knowing he’s QB1. We’ll better understand who he really is then.