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The USC football team held its first practice in full pads Wednesday, and on Thursday morning coach Clay Helton shared his thoughts from the session.

"Can’t believe you blink your eyes and it’s already practice 6," Helton said. "We just finished the acclimatization period, and actually got our first full pad practice yesterday, which we jumped right into some live scrimmage situations. So we can get some much needed tackling. That’s the first opportunity to be able to get that. To be honest with you, really pleased. We put a lot of investment, not only into our tackling drills and our fundamentals, but also ball security situations offensively. It really was a clean scrimmage atmosphere with not a lot of missed tackles and no balls on the ground. You always get what you invest in, and it was awesome to see that both live and on tape, last night and this morning."

The Trojans are building up to their first scrimmage Saturday, which they'll do in the morning in the Coliseum to get used to the ramping up at that time as their Nov. 7 season opener against Arizona State will have a 9 a.m. PT kickoff.

"We are going to go to the Coliseum in the morning to feel what that feels like. We’re going to do that the next three Saturdays in preparation for an early kickoff against Arizona State," Helton said. "I came away yesterday saying there’s still a lot of work to do. We’re very thankful to have three more weeks prior to the season. Really proud of the kids' effort and I'm really proud to see our fundamental drill work carrying over to live team situations. Probably the most work we’ve got to do is the continuation and implementation of some new systems, both defensively and special teams-wise, to get rid of that little bit of confusion that creates hesitation. ... But the reps this week and what the kids have accomplished has been very good. I’m very pleased right now."

While media are not permitted at practice due to campus COVID-19 protocols, USC has made some video from the Wednesday practice available. Watch that here: