USC football: Jaxson Dart reveals why he uses single vertical eye-black on gamedays

Former five-star prospect Jaxson Dart is riding high after leading the USC Trojans to a 45-14 comeback victory over Washington State in Pullman, Washington. The uber-talented true freshman quarterback wears his eye-black in a unique way, one single line vertically on his eye (pictured above).

After the game, a few USC reporters asked him whether or not the eye black would continue and why he wears it in the unique way.

“Oh yeah, it’ll definitely continue. I started it in high school,” Dart said. “I saw a LSU DB have it one time and I was like, man that looks really cool. And then, I’m a big Star Wars guy…Me and my friends kind of change into Anakin Skywalker. He’s got the scar. And so now, I just go out there and kind of just correlate to Anakin Skywalker (Laughs).”

It’s funny that he mentions Anakin Skywalker because he’s definitely got the long hair flowing and the single vertical eye-black looks like his “scar.” So, there are a few similarities there.

Dart struggled a bit early in his debut as a true freshman for the Trojans but then the USC offense erupted in the second half under the guidance of his surgically accurate arm. The defense made some big-time plays, too.

The Trojans put up 38 points in the second half against Washington State, the most since September 3, 2005, at Hawaii. The Trojans’ defense also put up points on the scoreboard as well, so they deserve plenty of credit.

But make no mistake about it, Jaxson Dart lived up to his lofty five-star ranking in the 2021 class with a dazzling debut. In On3’s Class of 2021 prospect rankings, Dart was rated as the second-best quarterback in the country and as the sixth-best overall prospect in America, according to On3. He threw an early interception and he even admitted after the game that he was a little too excited early in the contest.

But once he settled down, that’s when the college football world got to see why On3 was so smitten with the signal-caller coming out of high school. Dart continued to spin surgically accurate spirals all afternoon long and there was nothing the Washington State defense could do about it. There’s no defending a perfectly placed football and Dart threw a lot of his passes right on the money last Saturday, completing 30 of his 46 pass attempts (65.2 percent).

All he did after he was done was set the USC record for passing yards in a debut in the comeback victory. He threw for 391 passing yards and four touchdowns while tossing in two interceptions. The game came at the end of what was described as an “emotional week” for the Trojans by On3’s Erik McKinney.

The former national Gatorade Player of the Year has officially made the quarterback battle at USC even more interesting. Time will tell if Kedon Slovis gets his starting job back after his injury, but Dart’s talent is undeniable and will be impossible for USC’s coaches to ignore.