USC defense gaining cohesion, confidence as they continue through fall camp

When the USC Trojans take the field against the LSU Tigers in Las Vegas to open the 2024 regular season, USC fans will be looking for any sign that things are different with this year’s defense compared to the 2023 version, which went down as one of the worst in Trojans’ history. There’s a growing sense that they will.

Much earlier this offseason, following the hiring of defensive coordinator D’Anton Lynn and the other assistants on that side of the ball, head coach Lincoln Riley delivered a strong statement about how much defense was going to matter to this program:

“What I told Coach Lynn is my mentality going into it is we’re going to do everything that we can in this program to accelerate the process of us playing great defense at USC,” Riley said. “And whatever it takes to get that done from a development standpoint, from a staffing standpoint, from the way that we practice, everything here is going to be done with a defensive mind first…Again, the edge here is always going to go to what’s best for our defense.”

Six months later, defensive end Jamil Muhammad is enjoying the follow-through from Riley. Following Wednesday’s fall camp practice, Muhammad spoke at length about the strides this program has taken defensively since allowing at least 34 points in each of the final eight games of the regular season. The fire from experiencing that still burns as motivation, but the feeling has evolved from almost a feeling of hopelessness at times last year to a place where Muhammad sed the word “excited” a handful of times to explain how he’s feeling about the defense at this point in camp.

“Ending the year the way we ended it last year, aside from the bowl gam, nobody in USC history wants that to happen,” Muhammad said. “And you definitely don’t want to be the team to have that type of season. This place is used to being No. 1 year in and year out. I think we just hated being those guys to let that go down and obviously coach Riley took some responsibility. He took it to heart as well, being that he went and got a new defensive coordinator and made some other changes. I thank him at the end of the day because without some of the changes he’s made, we wouldn’t have been able to make some of the changes we’ve made.”

With a new defensive coordinator comes significant changes on the field. And the added size up and down the roster has been covered at length. Muhammad said off-the-field changes have played an important role in the positive feelings from the defensive players. He pointed to the NFL backgrounds of Lynn and defensive line coach Eric Henderson shaping a new way they hold meetings. He said that structure has allowed the defense to “have fun but also lock into the small details” on that side of the ball.

Riley said on Tuesday that the USC defense “dominated” big chunks of a recent scrimmage against the Trojans’ offense. Muhammad seemed to agree with that take.

“We’ve just been playing with so much cohesion,” he said. “We’re so prepared.

“I feel like as of right now, I think this team is probably closer than maybe we were towards the end of last year,” Muhammad said. “That’s saying something, being that we have a lot of new guys coming in.”

A lot of effort went into the process of turning this thing around. To a player, there was talk before and after the bowl game that the vibe was different as players who had checked out were no longer around and everyone still suiting up truly wanted to be there. This offseason was more buy-in type activities.

“We took it upon ourselves to have a lot of players’ meetings, captain and leader-led meetings,” Muhammad said. “I took my guys out to lunch. I’m sure some of the inside backers did the same with theirs. We did a D Line dinner with coach Henny. They’ve been preaching getting to know different guys. We implemented some things in fall camp where we were able to spend more time with…people we don’t normally spend our days with.”

The results are evident.

“One thing I can point out about this team that’s different from last year is the offense is so close with the defense and defense is so close with the offense,” Muhammad said. “Last year, it was like that, but it wasn’t the whole team. This year it seems like it’s the whole team.”

That whole team still has the remainder of fall camp to get through but it’s clear Muhammad has his sights set on the first chance he gets to take the field again with what should be a very motivated and united USC defense. It seems as though the opponent doesn’t matter. This group just wants an opportunity to prove itself.

“I’m excited,” Muhammad said. “I’m ready for September 1st. That’s all I can say.”

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