Transfer portal gives no help to depth at QB
LOS ANGELES » Miller Moss stood quietly upon the postgame dais, emotion having melted into a quiet smile, a trophy in his right hand and streaks of black smeared under red-rimmed eyes.
The quarterback was exceedingly humble there in San Diego, accepting the Holiday Bowl’s Offensive Player of the Game award on Dec. 27 and starting a run of postgame interviews in which he deflected any glint of individual praise back onto his teammates. That was fine, all in all. They did the talking for him, bellowing and hollering when he was presented with the gleaming shrine of metal, running back Austin Jones pointing at the “6” across the front of his own jersey.
“Six,” Jones announced to a buzzing onfield crowd, holding his hands up in a direct reference to Moss’ touchdown total on the evening. “Six of ’em.”
Finally afforded a shot to start, Moss might have seized USC’s soon-to-be-vacant quarterback job in the span of one San Diego night, that unfathomable Holiday Bowl performance planting a warning flag to any quarterbacks looking to walk through an open portal door. It had been his attitude for weeks, the backup wholly unconcerned over anyone head coach Lincoln Riley might bring in to replace the likely-to-depart Caleb Williams, simply focused on bombing away against Louisville.
“Even, they bring in Will Howard — I’m assuming that’s a done deal — so they’re bringing him in ... In (Miller’s) mind, it’s not about who’s coming behind him, it’s about the task at hand,” Moss’ one-time quarterback trainer, Steve Clarkson, said earlier in December, referring to Kansas State transfer QB Howard.
It was not a done deal. Former USC target Howard announced Thursday that he was committed to Ohio State, completing a dry run in the early transfer-portal window at quarterbacks even as Riley has made clear his intention to target as many as two. And following that six-touchdown, 372-yard statement in the Holiday Bowl, Moss rolls into 2024 as the unquestioned QB1 at USC, an opportunity he’s waited on for three long years.
Here’s a full breakdown of USC’s quarterback room entering spring practice, the first in a six-part series examining the post-portal outlook for every part of the roster.
RETURNING » Sophomore Miller Moss, sophomore Jake Jensen, sophomore Gage Roy, junior Isaac Ward.
DEPARTING » Freshman Malachi Nelson (transfer to Boise State), junior Caleb Williams (draft — unconfirmed, but likely)
TOP QUESTIONS » What’s the transfer strategy? Riley cracked after the Holiday Bowl that Moss might have scared off the Trojans’ transfer-portal candidates at quarterback, but the fact of the matter is simple: This room is mighty thin. USC isn’t bringing in a single freshman quarterback in the 2024 class, and after Riley said he could see bringing in two portal quarterbacks in the wake of former fivestar recruit Malachi Nelson’s transfer, it’s seemed all but likely that USC would target help even if Moss dominated the Holiday Bowl. Most of the top signal-callers in the portal are already committed, however; it seems likely that USC will spend spring practice evaluating Moss before hopping back into the transfer market come mid-April.
• Is there any depth here? Not really. Jensen was named the backup for the Holiday Bowl and has two years in Riley’s system, but he comes from a junior college background, spending 2021 at Contra Costa in San Pablo, and seems unlikely to compete for the backup job.
THE GROUP X-FACTOR » The art of the quarterback, at both the college and the NFL level, has grown rapidly analytical. West Coast offenses. Quick-hit screens and dump-offs that open up the middle of the field. Dink. Dunk. Efficiency. Snooze.
For two years, though, USC has employed a quarterback in Williams who can paint inside the lines but frequently chose to go abstract, to eschew the pocket and fling some half-baked magic from unfathomable arm angles.
Moss exists in a much different lane — as Clarkson said, a “Drew Brees-type kid” who will beat you with IQ — but operated as a pure gunslinger in the Holiday Bowl, chucking a variety of calculated go-get-it balls to young receivers. Lost amid the sterling statistics and picturesque deliveries that night were at-times imprecise accuracy and risky throws. It’s certainly worth evaluating come spring whether Moss can adjust to Big Ten defenses which now have a full game’s worth of film of him to prepare.