Lincoln Riley shares what coming months for USC staff will bring

USC wrapped up its second spring under coach Lincoln Riley, and now the Trojans heads into the offseason looking to carry over the momentum. The USC staff will also play a part in that.

The next few months will be absolutely vital for the organization as it continues building following an 11-win campaign in 2022.

“Next three months, well the guys are going to be getting out on the road recruiting starting next week,” Riley said. “So all the assistants will be out all over the country. This is a really great chance to get out and watch spring football, go see these coaches. This is a really important time, especially in just the evaluation side of it, not only for this coming up year but the future years.”

USC signed the nation’s ninth-ranked recruiting class in 2023, while also adding 11 transfers in from the NCAA transfer portal so far.

Many of those players were already showing signs of becoming contributors this season during spring practice, with Riley noting the newcomer group compared remarkably favorably to the ones on other teams he’s coached.

Getting that continued influx of talent is a crucial step in building a perennial contender, and that starts with these summer months.

“We’ll be hosting a lot of recruits on campus, be it the transfer portal or we’ll do the majority of our official visits for the upcoming year here through June,” Riley said. “So it’ll be a lot of great hosting opportunities. Then a lot of it for us is prep work for the summer and then leading into the season.”

The USC staff will also be busy preparing gameplans for opponents this fall. The summer months are a great chance to do that, now knowing a little bit more what the Trojans’ strengths and weaknesses are likely to be.

“It’s kind of nice to be done with spring early because you now know exactly what you need to do,” Riley said. “Spring clarifies a lot of where the team needs to head, and then you start putting those plans down on paper. That’s everything from the offseason plan, the nutrition plan, how you’re bonding the team together, how you’re teaching, how you’re developing. This is kind of the fun part of it as you start to have an idea of who all you are gonna have on the roster and what they need to do.”

Riley knows USC can’t afford to waste much time, though.

The offseason starts and ends quicker than you can imagine, especially with so much to get done in such a short timeframe. The USC staff has to be on point.

“Lot of planning and a lot of anticipation for the guys to be back here in early June because obviously it’ll be very important for this team the next three and a half months, especially playing a Week 0 game and as quickly as this season’s going to come,” Riley said. “We’ve got to have an elite three months and really be ready to go on July 27.”