Lincoln Riley reveals big help to Caleb Williams transition to USC

What Lincoln Riley months ago perceived as a disadvantage for the USC Trojans turned out to be beneficial, especially for transfer quarterback Caleb Williams. Williams, who followed Riley to Pasadena after spending his true freshman season in Norman, immediately slotted in atop the Trojans quarterback depth chart (and is backed up by redshirt freshman Miller Moss).

With only those two quarterbacks taking reps during spring practice, Riley was originally concerned. In his years as a head coach, he’d always had at least three quarterbacks cycling in for reps during spring ball, he said. But giving those extra reps to Williams and Moss aided both greatly in getting accustomed to new surroundings (Williams) and a new system (Moss).

“It’s smoother. There’s no question,” Riley told reporters. “I’d say he [Caleb] and Miller both have a really good grasp of what we’re doing. The challenge in spring was we only had two quarterbacks that we were going to rep, which I’ve never had that before. What happened was, the advantage now coming out was we only repped two quarterbacks and they got a million reps. It’s great for Caleb, it was great for Miller, both. Both of those guys are very much in control of what we’re doing. Starting to get very comfortable with it.”

Riley added that Williams bringing in a year of experience playing in the system has been a tremendous help.

“And certainly Caleb’s experience with it, especially as we get deeper into this and we start to think about game planning and all that, the fact that he’s been through it with us, we can feel his confidence and I think the group can feel his confidence,” Riley said.

Riley and Williams are also bringing high expectations to USC. After making multiple playoffs and producing back-to-back Heisman-winning quarterbacks at Oklahoma (Baker Mayfield in 2017, Kyler Murray in 2018; Jalen Hurts was a finalist in 2019, too), the hopes are sky high for the Trojans. Riley is not shying away from this reality.

“Yeah, we’re not too concerned with the general public,” Riley said with a touch of sarcasm. “We love ’em, but we’re not too concerned about their opinions. We want to make them proud with the way we play. But the first day I got here, just like I’ve been saying the whole time, it’s championship expectations. We’re not going to shy away from it. Now, again, we’ve got to understand, talking about it doesn’t get that done. It’s in our actions. So every day, everything we do, is graded very simply: Was that at a championship level, or was it not? And if it was, it’s applauded. If it’s not, it’s corrected with discipline.”