USC Trojans Coach Lincoln Riley, Wide Receiver Makai Lemon, and Cornerback DeCarlos Nicholson discusses the depth of both the offense and the defense

Transcript

00:00Coach, you had 12 players score a touchdown from scrimmage last season.

00:04You've already gotten to that total so far.

00:07What does that say about the offense?

00:10I mean, it's good to see the contributions from different places.

00:14You know, one of them was a defensive player, too.

00:16But we've, yeah, it's showing some of the, I think,

00:20the depth that we've worked hard to establish here

00:22and the fact that, you know, it's a long season.

00:26There's going to be a lot of different things that are going to happen

00:28and having, you know, players on both sides of the ball that you can rely on,

00:32having guys that are developing behind the scenes,

00:35even though maybe they're not playing a million reps right now.

00:37Like, we're going to need them at some point,

00:39whether it's midseason, end of season, you know, next season,

00:42whenever it's going to be.

00:43So I think it shows the health of this program right now.

00:47How valuable is it to get those reps right now for just playing a lot of the guys

00:51in general as you enter a new phase of the season with big-time players?

00:54It's invaluable.

00:55I mean, you kind of look at the, you know, you contrast that to our start last year.

00:58And, again, the schedules are what they are.

01:00But, I mean, you know, having the opportunity to see that early,

01:04evaluate some of these guys is great.

01:07It's great for just locker room morale because, like I said last week,

01:10there's so much, so many people that need to contribute on a week-to-week basis

01:14to get a football team ready to play at a high level.

01:16You know, and the general public doesn't see a lot of that.

01:19And so, no, it's been good.

01:21It's been good, I think, just the confidence of some of our young guys.

01:24And I think the confidence of us as coaches to be willing to put them into games

01:29or to give them opportunities, especially as we get down the line

01:31into some, you know, bigger games and road environments and all that.

01:35So, you know, it's an exciting locker room.

01:38Staff's excited to coach these guys right now,

01:40and they've responded well through two weeks.

01:41All right.

01:43Give us a minute.