FOOTBALL

The Defense Is Ahead Of Offense To Start Camp

Lincoln Riley praised the defense in USC’s opening scrimmage of training camp.

I mentioned a couple days ago that the defense is always ahead of the offense the first week or so of training camps. They have less to learn so it takes time for the offense to catch up.

So it’s perfectly normal for him to say the defense stood out.

  • What I want to know is about the 1,400 pounds Riley said the team gained in the offseason?

If it was so easy to get bigger, why didn’t USC do it a year ago? They had Caleb Williams. They were in the Pac-12. The perfect scenario to become more physical and make a CFP run.

But no, Riley decided to wait a year to implement plans to gain weight. We’ll see if getting bigger is actually better when the season begins.

  • Last week, defensive line coach Shaun Nua said expectations for defensive end Braylon Shelby are “probably higher than anybody on the team.”

Today, Riley said Shelby has been injured and only done limited work. It’s not expected to keep Shelby out much longer but it shows why I said it’s better to wait until Shelby performs before just hyping him up and creating huge expectations.

6 thoughts on “The Defense Is Ahead Of Offense To Start Camp”

  1. It’s said that offensive linemen are among the smartest guys on a football field because they have to synchronize their blocking with several other linemen, whereas the defensive linemen only need to ‘pin their ears’ back and try to cause havoc

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    1. Sparrow,

      I being a former olineman, that statement is true. When I played, not only did the olinemen change blocking schemes on the line of scrimmage, but we would also call plays that we wanted to run while on the line of scrimmage. An example is, if we were running a counter on our side and we saw that they had the line stacked on our side, we would tell the qb, with an audible to go to the other side and run the play or change the play to something else. We were well coached.

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      1. True, and that is why it sometimes take a season or 2 to get the line properly synchronized

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  3. Grinch was about schemes and stupidity. His PPG allowed stat line bears this out. USC could not have ditched him soon enough. We can only hope LR learned his lesson there, which is coaching is not about friendships and loyalties – but its all about putting a winning product out on the field, and not accepting anything less from anyone on the staff…

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  4. Pingback: USC Morning Buzz: Beware The Propaganda – InsideUSC with Scott Wolf

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