Caleb Williams, Miller Moss explain how USC's culture has changed under Lincoln Riley

Following last season’s disappointing 4-8 campaign, the USC Trojans were in need of a complete reset on and off the field. When USC hired Lincoln Riley as the team’s next head football coach, he immediately got to work on rebuilding the culture within the Trojans program.

Following USC’s spring game on Saturday, Trojans quarterbacks Caleb Williams and Miller Moss went in depth on how important Riley’s emphasis on leadership has been as the team has tried to rebuild the culture inside the program. To Williams, Riley has done a great job at instilling tiers of leadership.

“We’ve had a bunch of guys on this team that the previous year didn’t do so well,” Williams said. “We got guys on this team that want to win the ball, want to win big games. We’ve been doing that, we’ve been progressing and doing pretty well with that. But a big part of it is being coachable. Sometimes you just gotta eat, it, whatever it is, you gotta take it. Coach, I mean he might say something that you might not like. You gotta listen to what he says. I mean he is your coach. But also just the culture fact of these guys here, we have a leadership group.

“We meet every week or so and one of the biggest things is that elite teams are led by the players, held accountable by the players. Good teams, they’re led by the coaches, held accountable by the coaches. And the poor teams, there’s nobody that does that. We’ve been trying to be the elite team. So we’ve been having a lot of players step up into leadership roles, be more commanding, have a voice. But to have that, you have to work. And when you’re working hard, you build loyalty, you build trust, and then you have those moments where you can speak up, hold your other teammates accountable.”

Moss: Riley has instilled a ‘playbook’ on leadership at USC

Miller Moss was at USC last season, so he has firsthand experience both before and after Riley took over. For Moss, the difference is night in day in regards to the culture within USC’s program. And a lot of that has to do with Riley prioritizing the program’s leadership structure, and clearly mapping that out for everyone.

“Just as someone that was here last year and went through that, I don’t think we lacked the players and the personalities within the locker room to have good leadership,” Moss said. “I just think there wasn’t a forum that fostered leadership. I think with coach Riley and his staff coming in, we’ve been given a playbook so to speak on how to do that and structure within that.

“So I think that’s one thing that’s really helpful. And then Caleb kind of touched on it, but I think the other thing is that no one guy is above coach, and it goes for me, that goes for Caleb, that goes for whoever it may be. I think we all have a good understanding of that and that helps our culture really a lot.”

The Riley era officially kicks off at USC in Week 1 in early September at home against Rice.