USC Football Notes: Donte Williams still coy on Jaxson Dart's availability

There's no reason to think anyone other than third-year starting quarterback Kedon Slovis will be taking the first snaps for USC on Saturday at Notre Dame, and yet interim coach Donte Williams declined to confirm that Thursday morning.

In his final media session before the Trojans travel to South Bend, Ind., Williams remained coy as to the availability of freshman QB Jaxson Dart and how Dart would factor in if he was cleared for action.

"Jaxson Dart is still day-to-day, and like I said, we'll do the best thing possible to put ourself in position to win a football game. So if that is Jaxson all of a sudden starting the football game last second, if that is Jaxson coming in the second, third series of the game, then so be it," Williams said on a Zoom call with reporters. "We'll do what's necessary to win the football game as long as his health is first."

Bear in mind that Williams has been consistently unrevealing (if not outright misleading) about injury matters, especially when it comes to his QB. He was still publicly calling Dart day-to-day after he had his minor knee surgery for a torn meniscus a month ago before the severity of the injury came to light, so it's probably best not to read too much into the comments.

But it's an interesting tact to continue to suggest Slovis could be replaced at any moment.

Dart took second-team reps against the scout team the latter half of practice Tuesday, but he was not seen taking any first-team reps in the portions of practice Tuesday and Wednesday open to reporters.

But could he be the second-team QB this week? That's the real question, and again, there was no clear answer Thursday.

"I mean, he hasn't been cleared yet, so once he's cleared then we'll take the next steps forward," Williams said.

RELATED: Jaxson Dart and coaches discuss his progress in recovery from knee injury | Full transcript of Donte Williams' comments Thursday morning

As for Slovis, he's combined for 677 passing yards, 5 touchdowns and 1 interception over the last two games, albeit a number of the stats in the lopsided loss to Utah came late after the game was already out of reach.

He has one career start at Notre Dame, coming back in his freshman year in 2019 when he completed 24 of 35 passes for 255 yards, 2 TDs and 0 INT in a 30-27 loss.

"It's obviously a big game, it's Notre Dame, it's a rivalry -- it's our biggest rival and we obviously haven't won there in a while," Slovis said this week. "But I think the biggest thing is, I remember as a freshman we go out there and at halftime I think [we were down] 20-3 and you can't start off a game like that and expect to win. I know a lot of those guys, probably myself included and I remember Drake [London] kind of saying, 'Man, that was a big environment -- I kind of got caught up in the lights.' You can't let that happen. ...

"It's not the same team or same defense, but I think just the confidence of knowing you can go in there and have success, obviously I'm excited to play there. ... We just have to bring what we bring here in practice onto the game field."

Williams didn't say anything further about the status of nose tackle Ishmael Sopsher, but defensive coordinator Todd Orlando had said pretty clearly on Wednesday that he expected the redshirt sophomore to make his Trojans debut if he continued to practice well the rest of the week.

"We’ll see his conditioning moving forward, but we want to play him and we’ll see how he finishes up the rest of the week," Orlando had said.

When asked about Sopsher on Thursday, Williams just reiterated what the Alabama transfer could bring to the defense as another option at the Trojans' thinnest position.

"The same thing I've been seeing -- a big, athletic body. It's a reason why he was heavily recruited out of high school," he said. "He had some setbacks as far as surgeries and different things like that. Hopefully that's all behind him now and he's ready to go forward and showcase his abilities."

...

Williams talked about having some extra bodies to use on scout team to hopefully give the offense some better looks over the last week.

"For one, just us getting healthy. By us getting healthy it allows some guys that maybe were with the defense that wasn't able to [contribute] to be on the scout team. Now all of a sudden we're getting some guys on the scout team that are maybe some of our freshman type guys, whether it's Ceyair Wright or Prophet Brown or Anthony Beavers, Xamarion Gordon, at the same time the Colin Mobley's, Max [Gibbs] actually being able to play some D-line and go down there with the scout team. Those things have helped," he said. "We're pretty thin when it comes to D-line pretty much all year. Our backup linebackers have been the scout team D-line, just because we're so thin, so just to even have actually D-linemen down there that the O-line can block and basically feel as far as weight-wise is huge."

...

Williams will be coaching in the USC-Notre Dame rivalry for the first time and shared his thoughts on the opportunity.

"It's a huge game, period. All these games are huge, but the rivalry itself it's the first time I'm able to be a part of it, so hopefully it's something I'm a part of for a very, very long time," he said. "So for me personally, this is the first of many, I feel, and I get a chance to go against a legendary coach and they have great coaches on their staff. All of that is extremely huge to me and a chance to fly across the country and lead a team into battle."

At the same time, he hasn't wanted the team to look at it with any added weight -- along the lines of what Slovis had said as well.

"You know what, there hasn't been too much talk about it because if you all of a sudden blow one game up so much then it's all of a sudden you're making this one game a lot more important than the others. They're all important no matter who's the opponent -- it's always no name, no face," he said.