Trojans prepared to face struggling Eagles
The USC football team is aiming to avoid a letdown as it travels across the country to face Boston College on Saturday. The No. 9 Trojans (2-0, 1-0 Pac-12) jumped five spots in the AP Poll after their stunning win over Stanford, but will be embarking on a decidedly longer road trip this weekend — the team’s first to the East Coast since a 2012 matchup at Syracuse. Even with the long flight and next week’s bye in mind, head coach Steve Sarkisian is not worried about the Trojans’ mindset.
Good memories · Redshirt junior quarterback Cody Kessler was named USC’s starting quarterback in the week leading up to last year’s game against Boston College. Kessler threw for 237 yards in a 35-7 win. – Mariya Dondonyan | Daily Trojan
“[The late start time] allows us to get a little extra rest, which, when you’re traveling back-to-back weeks, is helpful,” Sarkisian said. “Traveling on Thursday is helpful as well, we can get there and get a little bit more acclimated. All in all, I think we’ll be fine.”
The Eagles (1-1, 0-1 ACC) visited USC in the tumultuous final days of the Lane Kiffin era last season, falling 35-7 as then-redshirt sophomore Cody Kessler played his first game as the Trojans’ sole starting quarterback. Kessler threw for 237 yards and two touchdowns, while a dominant effort from USC’s front seven held future NFL running back Andre Williams to just 38 yards on 17 carries.
This year’s Eagles squad has struggled without Williams, following up an uninspiring win over Massachusetts in its opening game with a 10-point conference loss to Pittsburgh last week. Still, the team’s rushing attack has remained strong behind the versatility of dual-threat quarterback Tyler Murphy. Murphy is averaging 7.2 yards per carry in 29 attempts so far this year, good for 210 yards and two touchdowns. Sarkisian praised the Eagles’ ability to provide varied offensive looks.
“One of the unique strengths of their system is they give you a lot of stuff,” Sarkisian said. “They give you multiple personnel groupings, they give you just about every shift, motion, formation that we can think of, and they have an athletic quarterback to do all that stuff.”
The USC defensive front will attempt to emulate Pittsburgh’s success without senior inside linebacker Hayes Pullard, who is suspended for the first half of the game. Pullard has racked up 16 total tackles so far this season, second only to junior defensive end Leonard Williams’ 18. Pullard’s direct replacement, sophomore Michael Hutchings, and redshirt junior Anthony Sarao will have to pick up the slack at the center of the Trojan defense.
“It’s about adversity,” Sarao told Trojans Live. “Like once [Pullard] left the field, it hit just hit me emotionally. It fired me up and I got real emotional, and me and Leonard [Williams] rallied the troops and that was really it.”
Though Boston College has found success running the football, stopping the run has been a completely different story. Pittsburgh running back James Conner had his way with the Eagles last week, finishing with 214 of the Panthers’ 303 rushing yards. USC’s up-tempo ground game will once again be driven by sophomore tailback Justin Davis and redshirt junior Javorius “Buck” Allen, who picked up a career-high 154 yards against Stanford. Redshirt junior Tre Madden led the team with 102 yards and a score in last year’s win over the Eagles, but has been slowly moving up the depth chart while recovering from a toe injury.
Murphy’s success through the air has been limited, welcome news to the USC secondary. The unit looked utterly lost for large portions of the Stanford game, allowing the Cardinal’s Kevin Hogan to pass for 285 yards on 22 completions, numbers that were deflated by Stanford’s ineptitude in the redzone. One strategy that USC may use to improve its play in the defensive backfield is giving more reps to two-way freshmen Adoree’ Jackson, who saw time at cornerback and wide receiver last week.
“He’s one of our best cover guys,” defensive coordinator Justin Wilcox said of Jackson. “We’re going to continue to push him, and he hasn’t shown us any reason not to. That doesn’t mean he’s perfect, he’s gotta continue to get better too, but we’re not scaling back.”
For his part, Jackson is still adjusting to the college game.
“It still hasn’t hit me really that I’m playing college football,” Jackson told the LA Daily News. “It was crazy … It was a fight for the ball [against Stanford’s receivers]. It was just two athletes fighting for the ball.”
The weather is adding an interesting wrinkle to Saturday’s game; forecasts are showing a chance of rain in the Boston area this weekend. Sarkisian, who coached in at Washington for five years, is not worried about the elements.
“I miss the rain,” Sarkisian said. “We’re fine. These guys have played in it before … it can be another piece of adversity that we can overcome.”
USC leads the all-time series against the Eagles 4-0. The teams played a home-and-home series in 1987-88, and met again in the 2009 Emerald Bowl. This game will kick off at 5 p.m. PST and can be viewed on ESPN.