Lincoln Riley expects to have Domani Jackson back for game against Notre Dame

USC was without former five-star prospect Domani Jackson at cornerback in its game against Arizona, which went down to the wire in another offensive shootout.

The Trojans are expecting to get him back for this week’s game at Notre Dame.

“He did some nice things for us the other day. We do expect to have Domani back, which is a good thing certainly from a talent and depth standpoint,” coach Lincoln Riley said. “Not having him last week certainly showed up, especially during the game when we had a couple of guys that weren’t available.”

While USC’s defense has been under fire all year for its play and its penchant for giving up a lot of points, it is worth noting that the Trojans have been beset by injuries on the defensive side of the ball.

That’s just a reality that Riley and company have had to deal with.

“We’ve just had so many guys in and out of the lineup. It has been a challenge to build some of the consistency,” Riley said. “But proud of those guys that stepped up. Prophet (Brown) was a big part of the game-winning tackle at the end as he forced that, forced the toss play back inside. Obviously Jacobe (Covington) had some really, really nice plays in the game that was good to see. Yeah, we want to build the continuity but they’ve got to be available to do it, so having Domani back will certainly help this week, and hopefully these other guys can continue to progress.”

The good news is there’s a silver lining in the injuries that have occurred in the secondary so far. A lot of players have gotten the chance to play when they otherwise wouldn’t have.

It has created some additional depth.

In particular, Riley has been high on his unit’s ability to play multiple spots. Not everyone can do it, but there are enough who can that it makes it easier to deal with injuries like to Domani Jackson.

“Yeah, we’ve had to get a little creative at times,” Riley said. “For a while there we didn’t have (Christian Roland-Wallace), we didn’t have Jacobe there for a little while. So we did get a little bit thin. But fortunately we’ve got a handful of guys in the secondary I think that can step up.

“We’ve got a few guys at safety that could kick over there and do that pretty quickly. And I think we’re probably a little more equipped to handle it being Year 2 of this system for a lot of these guys here in Year 1. So there’s some moving pieces, there’s things we’ve worked behind the scenes, things we worked through walk-throughs in fall camp in the contingency if this did happen.”