USC’s bye week brought a little bit of everything: a battered veteran showing up when it mattered, a freshman pass rusher starting to look like a real problem, and a defense that finally cleaned up the mess in the penalty column.
The most telling scene of the week came from Jide Abasiri. USC defensive tackle showed up in a boot early last week, then surfaced on the injury report as a game-time decision before suiting up at Penn State. He lasted one snap, but that single rep still said plenty about where he fits inside this team.
“Jide just showed the character that he got,” Kameryn Crawford said. “And just how willing he is to go out there in any condition he's in, just go out there and play.”
“Jide a warrior, man,” Jahkeem Stewart added. “He got that Nigerian blood, so he's just tough as nails.
He's a great leader. Just having him in our area, even though he didn't play, he was also coaching me up on the sideline, knowing what I could do better because there's some plays where I messed up.
It was great. He affected us for sure when he's not even on the field.”
That kind of presence matters for USC, which is trying to build a pipeline where players like Abasiri and Crawford hand things off to younger pieces such as Stewart and Luke Wafle. The Trojans have talked plenty about culture, but this is the kind of example that gives the word some weight. Abasiri trying to answer the bell, even briefly, stood out as another sign of that leadership chain taking shape.
Wafle, meanwhile, keeps giving USC reasons to believe the future is arriving fast. The freshman picked up his first college sack against Washington, then followed it with another against Penn State, dropping Rocco Becht in the fourth quarter and helping shut down a crucial drive. After the game, Wafle joked that he blacked out and didn’t really remember exactly where he was when Chasen Johnson grabbed his fumble recovery to stop Penn State’s final push.
Crawford has seen enough of Wafle now to know the production is no accident.
“It's just starting from practice to small things,” Crawford said. “It's just communicating what time we goning to meet during the day, and just doing all the small little things that'll help lead into practice that week. So once game time comes, it's like 'All right, we communicated this much, we got no choice but to do it in the game."
Wafle has been on campus since January, but Crawford still sounds impressed by how quickly he’s taking off.
“It's just still shocking to me how athletic he is,” Crawford said. “How he's able just to get a play, get the call, and then just go make a play.
We aren't seeing many freshmen do that, and then just his presence, just being on the field, you most definitely can feel that. So just seeing his progression over these games has just been crazy.”
There was also a much cleaner look from USC in another area that has haunted it this season. The Trojans were flagged just three times for 25 yards against Penn State, a sharp contrast to the two previous games against Washington and Oregon, when they piled up 15 penalties for 144 yards. It’s been a point of emphasis for weeks, and it finally showed up in Happy Valley.
“That's just something we've tried to take more serious,” Tobias Raymond said this week. “If you want to win games, you can't have penalties like that.
That's something that's gonna kill you. It kills drives.
You might have had a stop, you get a penalty, and they get a first down. That's just something if we want to keep winning games and going the way we're going, that's just something we've got to eliminate completely.”
One smaller note from the week: freshmen Mark Bowman and Trent Mosley were seen hitting the grass in bare feet during USC’s non-uniform stretch and warmup periods. Mosley said he simply followed Bowman’s lead.
“That's a great question for Mark,” Mosley said. “I actually just followed Mark.
He's big on grounding and natural healing. So before a game, he was talking to me about it, and he was like, 'I'm going to do it.
So I was like, 'Might as well. It doesn't hurt.'
So I just went out there with him.”
In Other News...
USC's Big Ten Path Suddenly Looks More Open After Chaotic Weekend
A chaotic Big Ten weekend shook up the league picture in ways USC will notice right away. Washington, Northwestern, Ohio State, Rutgers, Michigan, UCLA and Oregon all came away with wins, and the slate was shaped as much by quarterback movement and injuries as by the final scores. Julian Sayin's injury altered Ohio State's path, while Dylan Raiola's return gave Oregon a different kind of lift, another reminder that the league's weekly balance can change fast.
For USC, the takeaway is less about any one result and more about how fluid the conference race has become. The Trojans have spent much of this stretch trying to measure where they fit in the new Big Ten pecking order, and a weekend like this only adds to the sense that the path ahead is not as fixed as it once looked. With so many teams dealing with shifting quarterback situations and uneven team dynamics, USC suddenly has more room to make its own case in the weeks ahead. [Read more 🡒]
USC Suddenly Has A Real Opening In The Big Ten Race
The Big Ten picture tightened up in a way that should have USC paying close attention. Ohio State still sits at the top of the league despite some injury concerns, and the latest Week 7 ranking reflects a conference that has already started to sort itself out, with several teams dealing with uneven form and key players either banged up or trending in different directions. For the Trojans, that kind of week matters because the path in a new league often opens up when the top group stops looking as secure as it once did.
USC has been mentioned as a potential contender, and now the conversation feels more real because the league around it is no longer spotless. The Trojans do not need the entire conference to collapse, but they do need the teams ahead of them to keep showing cracks, especially with injuries beginning to shape how some of those contenders can look from one Saturday to the next. For a program trying to establish itself in the Big Ten race, this is the kind of stretch where momentum can turn a hopeful season into something much bigger. [Read more 🡒]
USCs Playoff Path Just Got More Complicated After Ohio State-Indiana
Ohio States 19-15 win over No. 5 Indiana in Week 7 did more than tighten the race at the top of the playoff picture. It also sent a jolt through the rest of the field, including USC, which is still staring at upcoming matchups with both teams and now has to account for a Buckeyes group that looked sharp enough to knock off an undefeated opponent while also taking care of business under center.
The bigger wrinkle for the Trojans is what comes next at quarterback for Ohio State. Julian Sayin is expected to miss several weeks with a right shoulder injury, and Luke Fahey is likely to step in, changing the look of a game USC already knew would be difficult. Add in Indianas still-formidable roster after a 22-game winning streak was snapped, and the Trojans playoff path suddenly looks a lot less straightforward than it did just a week ago. [Read more 🡒]