After USC's fifth practice of spring Thursday, coach Lincoln Riley spotlighted the impact he's seen from the Trojans' beefed-up defensive and offensive lines in what has really been the biggest overarching takeaway from the first two weeks.
"You definitely feel it. Especially the competitive periods, especially when you start running the football against that front, you do, like the gaps and the holes when you play really big teams and really strong teams everything's smaller, right?" Riley said. "Like literally space is just taken up and you kind of feel that right now with our guys, and it's a real battle at the line of scrimmage. And same thing for our defensive line facing our O-line, it's like not two featherweights going at it -- this is like two big cats in the ring that you feel the punches of each one of them.
"And I think just the depth of that. It's not just one guy here or there. I mean, collectively it's like this guy, then that guy, then that guy, we can roll multiple dudes in there and you continue to feel the same thing."
Riley also talked more in-depth on the additions of veteran defensive backs DJ Harvey and Bishop Fitzgerald, what quarterback transfer Sam Huard has shown him, his expectations for the approval of the House Settlement that will usher revenue sharing into college sports and other topics.
Watch the full interview here and scroll down for a complete transcript of Riley's comments.
What's Makai Lemon's health status?
"Nothing that would go into the fall. Lem, he had a little bit of a hamstring right before we got started. Haven’t had him full go yet. He’s getting better. Hope to have him more towards the back half of spring."
And Kilian O'Connor?
"Kilian had an injury the other day in pass rush. Most likely going to keep him out the rest of spring. But not past that. We fully expect him to be ready to go for summer, and potentially an outside chance we’ll have him this spring."
What are your expectations for the House Settlement approval and the enforcement models for revenue sharing?
"I think everybody is kind of eager to see. It’s honestly a little tough to speculate on it, on like how well it could [work]. It just depends on how well it’s constructed. We’re just in a day and age where – we’ll see. That would be great if we could get to that. But I don’t know that I’m expecting that. I don’t know that really anybody is. We’ll see what happens.
"Yeah, certainly some clarity on some things with the rosters and ...
