Aug. 28, 2026, 12:24 p.m. PT<\/p>\n
USC football is finally back<\/a> this weekend. And that means the return of my weekly predictions!<\/p>\n Prior to each game that the Trojans<\/a> play this season, I will be making five predictions for the matchup. Then, after the game, we will revisit them and see how well I did.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s kick things off with my picks for Saturday\u2019s opener against San Jose State:<\/p>\n Jordan strikes first<\/p>\n Who will score the first USC touchdown of the season? I am going with running back Waymond Jordan.<\/p>\n Need a news break? Check out the all new PLAY hub with puzzles, games and more!<\/a>A freshman finds the end zone<\/p>\n As we noted in our depth chart takeaways<\/a>, USC will start several true freshman at receiver. Here is predicting that at least one of them catches a touchdown in his first college football game.<\/p>\n Spreading the (QB) reps<\/p>\n Sam Huard and Jonas Williams are still competing for the backup QB job. With the game out of hand by halftime, both quarterbacks see action.<\/p>\n Take the over<\/p>\n As of Thursday night, Action Network has<\/a> the over\/under for the game at 61.5 points. It would not stun me if the Trojans<\/a> hit this mark by themselves.<\/p>\n A different type of over<\/p>\n A noon kickoff in August is absolutely brutal. With temperatures projected to get into the 90s on Saturday, I am predicting that over 100,000 bottles of water are consumed inside the Coliseum during the time that gates are open.<\/p>\n (I unfortunately have absolutely no way of tracking this, so this prediction is purely for fun. In the unlikely event that any of the Coliseum concessions staff read my stories and have access to the water sales data, though, feel free to reach out!)<\/p>\n Contact\/Follow\u00a0@TrojansWire<\/a>\u00a0on X (formerly Twitter) and like our page on\u00a0Facebook<\/a>\u00a0to follow ongoing coverage of\u00a0USC Trojans<\/a>\u00a0news, notes and opinion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aug. 28, 2026, 12:24 p.m. PT USC football is finally back this weekend. And that means the return…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":446712,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[243,88,90,89,129117,91058,13081,5727,5725,507,65397,3143,1350,11986,25943,32753,9202,83608,377,58273,246],"class_list":["post-446711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-accessfree","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news","tag-sourcetrojans-wire","tag-sstssportscollegetrojansfootball","tag-sstsnfootball","tag-tagbig-10-hub","tag-tagbig-ten-conference-football","tag-tagcalifornia-gold-rush","tag-tagcgr-sports","tag-tagcollege-football","tag-tagcollege-sports","tag-tagfootball","tag-tagncaa-big-ten-conference","tag-tagsan-jose-state-spartans","tag-tagsan-jose-state-spartans-football","tag-tagsouthern-california-trojans-football","tag-tagsports-news","tag-tagusc-trojans","tag-typestory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=446711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446711\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/446712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}