The inside story of TE Michael Trigg's emergence and what it means for USC

Back in Tampa, Fla., last Saturday, Michael Trigg Sr. was at his restaurant Konan's BBQ, his attention somewhat split between work and a football game happening more than 1,800 miles away.

Deep in SEC/ACC country, the proud restaurateur was more proud dad on this day, decked out in his now-standard Trojans attire with the Pac-12 Network on the television and about 30 friends and family settled in to watch a game between USC and Colorado that otherwise held minimal attention nationally.

There, though, it was the main event.

"There's a lot of support from Tampa," the elder Trigg says over the phone the next night.

He had flown to Los Angeles for each of the Trojans' first three home games to watch his son, USC freshman tight end Michael Trigg, and even if he was on the other side of the country for this one he wanted to be as locked in on it as he could be, so he called in extra staff that day to help with the responsibilities of the often-bustling BBQ joint.

"[I got] to watch the game until it was time to say, 'Don't burn that damn meat, get back on that grill,'" he jokes.

As his son's first coach, who started getting him involved in workouts way back at the age of four and who continues to deliver his postgame critiques still to this day, the elder Trigg didn't miss much of anything, watching closely and taking his mental notes.

While Trigg had played minimally through the first few weeks of the season, there were indications that a larger role was developing for the four-star top-100 national prospect. He had caught 3 passes for 44 yards the week before against Oregon State and was earning more trust from the coaching staff in practice.

Then it happened -- one of those unmistakable Michael Trigg plays that he had delivered time and again on the high school field down the road at Tampa's Carrollwood Day School, where he often looked like a man amongst boys. Even as a freshman still trying to establish himself now at the college level, he evoked that again Saturday.

"I definitely had a flashback when I was running to the end zone," he'd admit afterward.

Quarterback Kedon Slovis had lofted a pass down the left sideline that Trigg hauled in over top of an overmatched Colorado defender while seemingly falling backwards, but in an instant he had not only found his balance but swiveled his hips around and was racing the final 20 yards into the end zone on a 46-yard touchdown grab.

In the moment, it felt like Trigg had arrived -- that the high school phenom who had played beyond his years at times in his first preseason at USC was now ready to fully transfer it over to the game field as well.

Back in Tampa, meanwhile ...

"It was like thunder," Michael Sr. says. "My mom answered the phone [at the restaurant], 'My grandson just scored a touchdown!' The dude said on the phone, 'Yeah, that's great, congratulations, but I want to order some barbeque.'"

He laughs.

"It was good, man. It was a great feeling. We've been waiting on that one," he says.

But later that night when father and son would catch up on the phone, as they do after every game, the elder Trigg didn't want to talk about the touchdown as much as a dropped third down pass that was a little behind the tight end and a 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty he drew in the first quarter.

"The relationship me and Mike got, I don't really give a damn about the touchdown. I want to know how he dropped the ball on third down," Michael Sr. says. "That's my conversation as a dad and as his first coach. His mom's going to celebrate the touchdown, that's fine, I'm trying to clean stuff up."

Out in Boulder, Colo., as Trigg exited the locker room and was surprised that reporters wanted to talk to him, he already was of the same mindset.

Asked if it felt to him, as it did to others, that Saturday and that impressive touchdown grab signaled his true arrival with the Trojans, Trigg gave it just a second's thought.

"Not yet," he said. "I've still got more work to do."

Michael Trigg Sr. met Trigg's mother, Tywanca, at Fort Valley State University in Georgia. That's where he first developed the thought that his son was a budding athlete who need waste no time getting started on his physical development.

"I knew it at two," Michael Sr. says.

"Yeah, he always says that," Tywanca says.

"I'd be working out and he ran a lap at two years old. I knew he was a little bit different," Michael continues.

By the age of four, father already had son starting with more formal workouts.

"Seriously, four," Tywanca confirms.

"He was doing probably 200 pushups at four," Michael Sr. adds.

Back when he was in college, Michael Sr. had seen the physical benefits from running hills, so once they moved back to Tampa, he sought out whatever hills he could find -- wherever that happened to be.

"They would find the tallest hill on the side of the interstate," Tywanca says.

"Florida's so flat, we would run the embankments," Michael Sr. says, picking up the story. "... We'd be on the side of the interstate and the police would stop and,' 'Hey, what are you guys doing?' 'Oh, go ahead.'"

Trigg's parents are sitting in Konan's BBQ last October, about this time of the year, after the tight end's commitment announcement party where he let everyone know he was going to be a Trojan. They're sharing stories and anecdotes about everything that led to that point, including the relentless coaching from Michael Sr.

Tywanca jokes that young Michael would look up at her as his dad was rustling him awake for another workout, hoping she'd step in for a reprieve that day, and she'd encourage him to go off with his father.

"I really appreciate you, Tywanca, for allowing me to raise him the way I saw fit when it came to things like that," Michael Sr. says, as they sit with a visitor at one of the tables in the restaurant. "Because I just really believe that any level of discomfort with your kids in athletics should come from the father, and the reason why I feel that way -- if a father puts their kid through discomfort, when other coaches do it they'll fight through it. ... I was never trying to be his friend -- I was always going to be his father."

And his coach.

The elder Trigg says he never missed one of his son's practices. In fact, it was his desire to create a more flexible schedule for himself that led him to open Konan's BBQ a little more than 10 years ago. He was an elementary school physical education teacher when he saw a "For Rent" sign in the window of a small store front halfway between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' Raymond James Stadium and the waterfront.

He invested in $500 a month rent and a vision and would later expand when the beauty salon next door closed down. Business has grown significantly over that time.

"I said, 'I've got to find something to do that would free me up.' Every time at his basketball tournaments, I'd [set up] my grill and sell barbecue. Everybody said it was the best barbeque in the city, so I said I'm just going to jump out on faith," Michael Sr. says.

In a way, that's what his son would do last year in committing to USC -- on the complete opposite side of the country.

The younger Trigg received his first football scholarship offer from Boston College the spring of his freshman year despite missing that previous season due to a hamstring injury. His athleticism was so apparent that he didn't need game film to catch the eye of college coaches.

"Since Day 1 he was just way more developed than a traditional ninth grader," says Carrollwood Day coach Marshall McDuffie, who also coached Trigg at Seffner Christian Academy his freshman year. "His football IQ was always high and he's just displayed all the things you see in a national prospect at a young age."

Trigg's offer list grew exponentially from there, to the point that he recalls he already had 40 offers before USC got involved, but he connected with the staff and the vision the Trojans had for him -- to step into the Y-receiver role that Drake London had dominated his first two seasons.

His parents didn't initially realize how much Trigg was talking to the Trojans, thinking LSU and South Carolina were the favorites. Eventually, Michael Sr. got on the phone with then-USC tight ends coach John David Baker and expressed his surprise in seeing the Trojans on his son's list of finalists in his recruitment. He playfully gave Baker a hard time about it, but he came to realize how serious his son's interest was in USC.

"I feel like there's more to see than Florida," he'd say last year after committing.

The family traveled to Los Angeles last October to take part in a brunch set up by QB Miller Moss, who was committed to the Trojans, along with fellow highly-ranked top targets Korey Foreman and Ceyair Wright (who would both eventually commit to USC as well).

As soon as the family returned home from that trip, Michael Sr. said he bought an iPhone, already planning ahead so that he could FaceTime his son across the country once he got to campus.

They had one of their calls Saturday night after the Trojans' win over Colorado, and again Michael Sr. made sure he played the role of dad/coach in that conversation.

"My dad's more like a critic than a fan. He lets my mom do the cheering and stuff like that," the younger Trigg said this week. "So even last game he said on the PI [that negated another long reception], I could have just went up straight for it instead of bringing my body into him. Just little things like that. ...

"[On the dropped pass on third down] I had stemmed the wrong way, I stemmed out instead of down, that's why it looked so hard. If I would have stemmed down it was an easy catch. I still should have caught it -- he was right about that one."

And then there was the 15-yard penalty on Trigg for going a little too far with a Colorado player at the end of a 17-yard Keaontay Ingram swing pass.

"The personal foul, that's just the Florida. That's just Florida -- that's just who we are as football players," Michael Sr. says over the phone the next day. "I told him, 'Now, it's about becoming a professional. When you block a [guy] in the dirt, just get up and jog back to the huddle because you don't want to hurt your team. In high school you can get away with that -- now it's on a whole 'nother level.' I'm just trying to clean it up for him so the coaches don't have to really do it."

Father and son have had a number of conversations throughout this season already -- not just critiquing games, but discussing the freshman's lack of playing time early on and how it was on him to change it, along with a call last month to process the surprising news of head coach Clay Helton's firing after just two games.

Having chosen a school so far from home to play for a coach who he wanted to play for, only to have that coach gone two weeks into the season, the elder Trigg wanted to see how his son was feeling about everything. (Not to mention Baker, the TEs coach who initially recruited him, left for Ole Miss after last season).

"Him and Coach Helton were good friends. I know Coach Helton recruited him and I was just worried about how was that going to be. He has a relationship with [interim coach Donte Williams] as well, but it's just like when Coach Helton [was fired], it's like, 'Damn, dad, I didn't expect that to happen like that.' I said, 'Nobody did.' But you've got to really fall in love with the school because things like that happen, so we talked about that," Trigg Sr. recalls. "I said, 'So, are you a Trojan?' He said, 'Yeah, I'm a Trojan, dad.'"

While it's taken the freshman tight end the first third of the season to settle into the offense and playbook, it does seem like he indeed found a home quickly within the locker room, bonding with London -- the star junior receiver whom he did a compelling impression of on that 46-yard touchdown -- and the rest of his teammates.

Back in August, after a fall camp practice in which Trigg delivered the two best highlights of the day (including a one-handed catch on a quick pass to the sideline before making a handful of defenders miss on his way downfield), London had said he was "like a proud father" watching the newcomer assert himself.

After Trigg's first career touchdown Saturday, London was among the teammates eager to congratulate him.

“I was running over there, I almost shed a tear," he'd joke after the game. "But no, I was happy for him because he’s really been putting [in] the work and been in his study book and getting it right so I was really excited for him.”

After impressing throughout fall camp on the practice field, it was somewhat surprising when Trigg didn't play much the first three games, logging just 21 offensive snaps and 1 short reception for 7 yards overall in that span.

It came as a bit of a surprise to Trigg as well, for that matter.

"It's hard when you're All-American football and basketball [in high school], everything runs through you since your sophomore year, and you get up here and you kill in camp. In practice he'd just do what he want to do, and then he can't get on the field. I said, 'Man, it's self inflicted. It's the playbook.' I just had to keep him positive, 'Just wait your turn, you'll be all right,'" his father says.

Again, Trigg acknowledges his father was correct.

"I wish I would have got in my playbook earlier, for sure," he said a couple weeks ago.

(Trigg added that now, though, "I feel like I know the playbook like the back of my hand, except for some new installs that we have" and that he continues to write out plays every day to learn from the repetition.)

"[In high school] he was just better than everybody so they would just check everything at the line and throw him the ball, so he never really had to learn a pro-style offense to that magnitude so it takes some getting used to," his father adds. "He thought that they're going to cater to him -- no, you've got to learn this playbook. He started to buy into it and he just settled down and got it."

If Trigg was frustrated by his limited usage early on, he didn't show it.

"I remember against San Jose State we put him in at the very end, we were trying to get him a touch. We actually told him in the huddle, 'Hey, we're going to throw this ball to you.' They flipped the coverage so we had to flip the play and the ball ended up going to EK (Erik Krommenhoek). The most excited player on the field was Trigg," USC tight ends coach Seth Doege said. "Same thing happened against Washington State. We get him in, get him a touch, the ball goes to [Joseph] Manjack on a big post throw. He's the first one down there and the most excited about it.

"So that's Trigg. Trigg loves his teammates, Trigg loves this team and Trigg loves to play regardless. Like any kid, if you believe in yourself you believe you should be out on the field, but I think he trusts the process."

And after a few weeks of continued progression in practice, the coaches developed some further trust in the freshman as well.

Doege says he started to see Trigg's confidence and comfort in the offense grow heading into the Oregon State game two weeks ago. The Tuesday practice that week was his best of the season, Doege felt, and when he backed it up the next two days the coaches decided to expand the freshman's role that Saturday.

Trigg played a then-season-high 26 snaps and caught 3 passes for 44 yards.

"He's learning the system, he's getting more confident in the system and his role, starting to learn the detail and not just like 'I have an out route.' What does that out route look like vs. this coverage, what does that out route look like vs. this leverage. All that other stuff, he's just confident now that he knows what he's doing," Doege says. "During camp, yeah, he made a bunch of special plays, but his head was spinning a million miles per hour because he's still trying to learn the system. Now, it's slowed down for him and now that he's caught a couple balls I can just see his confidence going up and up and I think he's going to be a pretty special player as long as he keeps his head on his shoulders and keeps grinding.

"He works extremely hard -- a guy that was raw to football but what you told him he just soaked in."

Trigg played a new season-high of 33 snaps last weekend vs. Colorado, coming out with the offense for the opening series and getting targeted early in the game. But he wasn't a factor after halftime. Williams dismissed the notion that any injury concerns or disciplinary action (perhaps related to the penalties) was a factor, and when asked about it Trigg simply said he was happy to support his teammates.

But his role should only keep growing. With a physical 6-foot-4, 245-pound frame, the agility of a basketball player -- he continues to say he hopes to play two sports at USC, though time will tell -- elite speed and athleticism for his size, and as offensive coordinator Graham Harrell puts it, "gigantic hands," he could very soon become one of the Trojans' top receiving targets.

(About those hands, Trigg said this week: "In ninth grade I had a 2X glove and in 10th grade I jumped to a 4X. It's just always been like that.")

"Like we've talked about with Trigg, he's a really, really special talent, and he's a guy that we want to depend on and that we're going to use," Harrell said. "He's just continuing to grow more and more each week. ... The more he can handle the more we'll give him and he's just another great playmaker that makes the offense go."

Trigg's continued emergence would give the Trojans another physical mismatch to complement London, which is fitting.

Back on his commitment day almost a full year ago (Oct. 11), standing outside his father's restaurant in Tampa, Trigg was asked what players he models his game after. He mentioned London.

"That's pretty much the person that's doing what I want to do," he said then.

With London almost surely headed to the NFL after this season, and none of USC's young receivers truly establishing themselves yet as the next in line, USC may need Trigg to fully grow into that mold heading into 2022.

And to that end, Trigg can fall back on one of his father's most overarching lessons from all their conversations over the years ...

"All my dad taught me was to be the best in everything I do. No matter where I'm at, I always need to stick out -- somebody need[s] to notice me," he said this week. "That's how I go at things, try to be spectacular as possible."