{"id":197989,"date":"2025-10-02T20:48:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-02T20:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/197989\/"},"modified":"2025-10-02T20:48:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-02T20:48:09","slug":"uscs-lincoln-riley-reveals-how-recruiting-factors-into-bye-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/197989\/","title":{"rendered":"USC’s Lincoln Riley Reveals How Recruiting Factors Into Bye Week"},"content":{"rendered":"

USC Trojans<\/a> coach Lincoln Riley<\/a> went in depth about what went wrong in their loss against the Illinois Fighting Illini. He also revealed how he, his staff, and players are approaching this bye week. <\/p>\n

The Trojans will now use this week off to get a look at high school recruits and then rest up before they take on the Michigan Wolverines on Saturday, Oct. 11 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.<\/p>\n

\"USC<\/p>\n

Sep 27, 2025; Champaign, Illinois, USA; Southern California Trojans head coach Lincoln Riley before an NCAA football game with the Illinois Fighting Illini at Memorial Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Ron Johnson-Imagn Images \/ Ron Johnson-Imagn Images<\/p>\n

Why Defensive Line Got Out To Slow Start vs. Illinois<\/p>\n

“I think we had some opportunities to make some impactful plays early on in that game. We missed some opportunities to do that both in the run game and in the show game. I think that\u2019s one of those things, not just defensive line, just as a team one of those things. We had a great opportunity to start fast as a team and we didn\u2019t do that on either side. When you do that against a good team on the road you\u2019re going to be in for a dog fight like we were after that.”<\/p>\n

“We\u2019ve built that group up enough that we have high expectations for it and that\u2019s part of having high expectations. We expect every time that we\u2019re on the field to feel the presence and it really wasn\u2019t until later on in the game that we started feeling that a little bit more\u2026We weren\u2019t awful there, certainly weren\u2019t to the standard that we expect out of our defensive front.”<\/p>\n

Recruiting During Bye Week\"USC<\/p>\n

Aug 30, 2025; Los Angeles, California, USA; Southern California Trojans head coach Lincoln Riley watches from the sidelines against the Missouri State Bears in the first half at United Airlines Field at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images \/ Kirby Lee-Imagn Images<\/p>\n

“We practiced early this morning and then the guys are lifting here in between their class schedules throughout the day and the tea will get Friday and Saturday off. Going to try to get the coaches out of here tonight at a decent hour.”<\/p>\n

“The majority of our staff tomorrow will be in the state of California going to high schools, going to high school games. I\u2019ll be at a couple game tomorrow night. We\u2019re going to really work hard here\u2026The high schools especially in this area will feel the presence of the Trojans tomorrow night\u2026We got a target list of players or games that we want to see\u2026We put together a game-plan. This is done in August. There\u2019s going to be some adjustments along the way.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

MORE: Biggest Winners, Losers in USC Trojans’ First Loss To Illinois<\/a><\/p>\n

MORE: Why Transfer Lineman Bear Alexander is Thriving at Oregon After Rocky USC Exit<\/a><\/p>\n

MORE: Former USC Quarterbacks Helping Make Trojans History in NFL<\/a><\/p>\n

On DJ Harvey<\/p>\n

“We bounced around corner and nickel with him. He\u2019s been one of the guys when we lost Prophet and Graham, Chasen and all these guys, admittedly we kind of bounced around position wise. Tried to lean on his experience as a college football player even though he hasn\u2019t been with us or in this system as long as some of the others.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

“He\u2019s had some really good plays. He\u2019s had a couple plays that certainly he wants back. I thought he came in the game the other day and did some really good things. I didn\u2019t feel like it was pass interference on the play. I thought it was a good aggressive DB play in a late moment and a call that should not have been called. We need his experience.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

On Waymond Jordan\"USC<\/p>\n

Sep 20, 2025; Los Angeles, California, USA; Southern California Trojans running back Waymond Jordan (2) runs the ball against the Michigan State Spartans during the second half at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Mandatory Credit: Gary A. Vasquez-Imagn Images \/ Gary A. Vasquez-Imagn Images<\/p>\n

“He\u2019s definitely been an effective player for us. He\u2019s done a lot of really positive things. Great backs can\u2019t fumble the ball\u2026He came back and had a lot of very positive snaps. I do think that you do feel his experience and the fact that he\u2019s played in some games it doesn\u2019t crush him.”<\/p>\n

“He\u2019s been able to respond\u2026He knows he got to be better than that in terms of his ball security and making sure that we end the play with the football. He\u2019s doing a lot of really good things for us.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Like any of these players, there’s going to be thing that ‘alirght, catch your breath in the bye week.’ We gave every player a laundry list of things, like here’s the target area that when we get to the end of this week you have to be better at. Here’s the plan to do it. Now, let’s go execute it.” <\/p>\n

Goals For Defensive Side of Ball During Bye Week<\/p>\n

“We did a lot of fundamental work. Making sure that we’re closing some of the air in the run game. So we spent a lot of time on that with the guys. With some of the moving pieces in the secondary, we did a lot of different work in terms of communication.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"USC Trojans coach Lincoln Riley went in depth about what went wrong in their loss against the Illinois…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":197990,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[399,398,396,397,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-197989","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-football","11":"tag-ncaafootball","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197989\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}