Matthews never made sense to me once I saw him get up to 270-280. You’re not a TE anymore. Just switch to OL and be done with it. That would be good to get that scholarship back. I wonder if some of these are team driven and kids are getting the word out early because they’d like to have some options. I don’t see anyone so far who is shopping himself for money like Leavitt. Most of this so far is what we all warned about with this system. Yeah you’re going to have the guys who shop themselves for $. But we preached years ago that you were going to turn this into the NFL. Remember. Collegiate sports and scholarships were to give many kids, most of whom will never make $, a chance to get a good education. Most of the kids on this list previously would play a little or not at all. They would attend class and become City Managers, Financial Planners, teachers, firemen. Now they are cut loose and if lucky will end up at Southern Utah majoring in exercise science.
Conley is the one that confuses me. He started as a redshirt frosh. Had a little too much swagger for me and got some penalties. But was young and CB are cocky guys. Jackson had the nuclear scenario happen. BOTH RB ahead of him went down for the season early on. Game 4-5. And he was totally passed and replaced by a walk on. OOOWWWWWWWW And meanwhile, one of those RB returns, and they have two more hotshots coming in. Also appears obvious they see Jackson basically as a fullback.
I would be surprised to see Olsen leave. Juco guys like this #1 TE are a crapshoot and Mark Bowman is a HS Junior. I do not think he will be ready to take on the co TE spot. USC was also very lucky not to lose either TE this year. That’s a very physical position and USC plays 2. Every other year USC has had TE go down. So even if Olsen stays he has to only beat out one guy. Some JC dude (and JC isn’t what it used to be. Being #1 there is the tallest midget) and a 16 year old.
Cordova is no loss. Jackson saw the field but this was probably the high water mark for him. DJ Jordan is a shame because young WR and young OL are like young pitchers. I don’t like giving up on them early and Jordan was a frosh.
On the bright side, USC literally started and played extensively in their 2 deep FOUR guys from Riley’s first OL class. That’s massive. They were either desperate and thin or they are doing a great job of development. Seeing that the only Senior was transfer Reed and the only member of Helton’s group was a walk on in Killian O Connor, I think that’s really impressive to create an OL class and group that quickly. Especially since they had a lot of injuries and still functioned as a quality unit. Not great, but considering they had 4 guys who were either RS Soph or True Junior, plus a couple other guys who were I think RS frosh, they are doing great work developing them and should be in much better position as those guys become Juniors, Seniors and more come behind them. That OL class literally has saved the program and bought USC time to build a pipeline behind them Usually if you can get 1-2 starters or 1 and a role guy out of an OL class, you’re doing OK. 2 starters in each class means you’ll have 2 RS Sr, 2 RS Jr and 1 RS Soph starting. They had 4 RS Sophs (Noa was a true Junior). So you can see how much experience they didn’t have and how much time they lost. That OL coach did a great job
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