Offensive Line Woes

USC allowed five sacks and rushed for 30 net yards against Utah yesterday. But instead of focusing on the game, let’s look at how it relates to player development. I already wrote during the week how Zach Banner and Jordan Simmons were not factors before getting hurt.

There are two things at work here: Coaching and recruiting. Either players are not getting coached properly or poor decisions were made. Whatever the reason, I don’t think you can use scholarship reductions on this one when highly recruited players are struggling with penalties. Even yesterday, the offensive committed three penalties, all false starts.

It could have been the crowd noise that caused it at the Coliseum.

12 thoughts on “Offensive Line Woes

  1. Sarcasm on crowd noise, will get you respect Scott (with SUCLA and Stu **gina) but not with Trojans. Congrats if that was your goal. Ate CLAP bRuins.

  2. Scottie: you’re missing the most important component – the player. If Zach Banner is too lazy to work hard and learn the system then coaching and recruiting is not going to fix that. If Jordan Simmons gets injured then coaching and recruiting is not going to fix that.

  3. It’s time for USC to take a page out of Stanford;s playbook and recruit Huge o line men who are smart and nasty at the point of attack. Our girls are too nice.

  4. Can someone with some football knowledge (eliminates all trolls) tell me if we run a power/gap system or a zone blocking scheme?

    Recruiting a 17 year old who’s already 300 lbs isn’t easy as most think — especially in California wherebeing that size isn’t socially accepted. In the Midwest and the the South, boys like that grow on trees.

      • I thought so as well, but watching plays with Walker makes me wonder otherwise. Power blocking is so simple and rarely ends up in what you see Auddrey Walker doing in many cases where he fails to pick up someone.

        Maybe he’s supposed to pick up a guy that ended up dropping in coverage?

  5. The offensive line are positions where lesser rated recruits many times outperform the more sought-after recruits. It comes down to work ethic over raw talent. We also shouldn’t be down on our younger offensive linemen. Underclassmen are at a physical disadvantage against the upperclassmen.

  6. When bored out of their mind fans start playing with the empty seat next to them, it does get awfully loud!

  7. Both of those guys were 5* can’t miss prospects, who were expecting to be in the starting lineup day one! Something is definitely wrong….

  8. I would have liked to see Simmons get some playing time.. he is a big boy and could provide push.. Banner is to long and tall and skinny.. I think he would get bullied like all the other USC O-Lineman..

    Look the comparisons in O-line size with other schools, Wiscon, Bama, and other SEC Programs, and then look at the size of USC O-Linemen.. they just look tall and slim..

    We need some monsters on the line..

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