How does USC replace Caleb Williams? By adding 1,400 pounds
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Paolo Uggetti, ESPN
LOS ANGELES, CA — It doesn’t take much to see that things are different at USC this year.
Yes, Lincoln Riley is still the head coach — his third season, in fact — and the Trojans do return a number of players from last season and several other coaches too. The goal, the message, the approach — nobody will tell you any of those have changed. But it’s also clear that things are very different indeed.
Walk onto the practice field and you’ll immediately see the glossy, green new turf field USC has built being shown off and utilized. The practice area is now twice as large. Look around and you’ll see banners announcing what’s coming: an entirely new football facility, expected to cost, $200 million, coming in 2026.
Take a closer look out onto the aforementioned field and you’ll see plenty of changes too. D’Anton Lynn has gone from wearing UCLA Bruins blue and gold to hopscotching his way down the 405 freeway to try and take USC’s defense into the future. Anyone who watched a game of the Trojans last year knows they need it.
Lynn’s deluge of a move brought along others in the same current, not just coaches from around the country with breadth and depth of experience in college and the NFL, but also much-needed talented defenders from UCLA, Oregon State and Texas A&M to try and improve both in the present and the future.
“I do think that we’re fortunate enough to be at a place that you can have a shot at anybody,” Riley said when he hired Lynn. “We just decided that we’re not going to worry about a current job that these guys have. We’re going to go after the best.”
And yet perhaps the biggest change, the weightiest and most consequential, can be found under center. Caleb Williams is gone. Enter Miller Moss. The junior, who backed up Williams the past two seasons, is both a fresh face and a familiar one. It is as close to continuity as USC could have gotten short of convincing Williams to forego the NFL one more season.
Zoom in just a bit more and you can also see what many players and coaches have been talking about for much of the offseason. The Trojans are bigger — 1,400 collective pounds bigger, according to Riley — and have put an emphasis on reshaping their roster. Literally.
“When we got here, just with the scheme change going into the new conference, we knew that we had to get bigger,” Lynn said. “We knew we had to get stronger.”
USC’s 2024 season will not fully be determined by what life after Williams may look like. It won’t come down to how much weight or strength they’ve gained, or be expected to be overhauled by a single coaching hire.
Without a Heisman Trophy winner and No. 1 overall pick on its roster, USC is banking on what it has been able to build and evolve over the past three years under Riley to turn what could be a down year for the Trojans into one where they could be in a position to surprise.
“I feel a bright energy around the team this year,” wide receiver Zachariah Branch said. “I definitely feel like everybody’s fully invested into the team and I feel like that’s just going to help us excel.”
AT SOME POINT, Elijah Paige and Mason Murphy stopped counting calories. The mandate this offseason from the coaching staff and Rachel Suba, USC’s director of sports nutrition, was that USC linemen would eat about 5,000 to 6,000 calories a day, but once you get to a certain routine with the amount of food, the calories count is second nature.
“I got to the point where I was more just eating a lot of big meals,” Murphy said. “Four big meals a day, so that definitely gave me some gains.”
“I was just eating whatever they put in front of me,” Paige said. “Whatever I could eat to gain weight.”
Behind the 1,400-pound total that Riley touted are Suba and Bennie Wylie, USC’s director of sports performance, who were the architects of the offseason fitness plan that players committed to.
Suba and Wylie created a cohesive offseason plan for players and each position group that catered to their needs — be it gaining weight, losing it or simply maintaining. From the meals to the workouts, the goal was to get stronger in preparation for a season that would be different in more ways than one.
“They have physically prepared us and that has just mentally prepared us to be ready for this season,” safety Christian Pierce said. “I feel like now our strength is in our conditioning.”
The total weight added may be the headline, but USC’s players have been individually sharing before and after photos of their progress, and more specifically, the weight gained and body fat lost in the process. The added strength, the way the whole team has embraced the process of getting bigger and faster, seems to have emboldened USC’s roster as it enters a new fray it knows will ask far more than previous seasons have.
“I think last year the emphasis and the importance of getting bigger and stronger was shown,” cornerback Bryson Shaw said. His own offseason calorie count hovered around 4,500. “We knew we needed to improve in that area and Coach Wiley and his staff challenged us to respond to the criticism. And I think we really responded well. Going into this season, I think we’re much way more ahead than where we were going into last season.”
What looms larger is the unforeseen nature of playing in an entirely new conference, where different styles and different opponents await. Like Lynn, some coaches and players view the added emphasis on strength as a necessary point of transitioning into the Big Ten.
“We want to have a physical presence. We want to talk about being one of the most physical or if not the most physical team in the country,” linebackers coach Matt Entz said. Last year, USC missed a total of 141 tackles. “It’s a game of blocking and tackling. Not to oversimplify the game, but sometimes as coaches it’s easy to do that. We need to be fundamentally better than our opponents and that’s where we’re at right now. We got to continue to every day go out there with that mentality.”
THE ELEPHANT IN the room all of last season — and really, the past two years — was USC’s defense. At its best, it was bending but not breaking enough to allow them to stay in games. At its worst, it was actively working against an offense that, at times, was one of the best in the country.
Riley relented and fired defensive coordinator Alex Grinch with two games left in the regular season. Then, as many people expected that USC would look far and wide for a replacement — perhaps into Big Ten country even — Riley simply reached across town and hired the coach that turned UCLA’s defense into one of the best in the country.
With Lynn came not just the subsequent hires of secondary coach Doug Belk from Houston, North Dakota State head coach Entz to coach linebackers and former NFL assistant Eric Henderson to coach the defensive line.
“It’s revamped the energy in the building, something that we needed,” Shaw said of the new staff.
While several returning members of USC’s defense — and those who are new as well — are avoiding comparing and contrasting what this year’s defense already feels like to last, some are not hesitating in doing just that.
“The culture last year wasn’t something that everyone was upholding and agreed to uphold. It had to do with a lot of the leaders just letting stuff slide, not thinking everything mattered,” linebacker Mason Cobb said. “So for this year, I think a lot of guys have been here, a lot of transfers have understood what we’re trying to do here and hopped on board and everyone’s on board.”
“I would say it’s night and day when it comes to this year and last year,” quarterback Moss said of the defense. “I think going against obviously guys like Kamari [Ramsey], Easton [Mascarenas-Arnold] who came in, Mason Cobb, along with a lot of really special players in the secondary makes it difficult for me as a quarterback. But it also makes me better.”
Without divulging strategy, USC defenders and other coaches have described Lynn’s system as “simplified,” “versatile,” “aggressive,” “fun to learn” and one that allows them to feel “freed up” and “play to their strengths.”
“I think it is a pro scheme, multiple fronts, multiple coverages, a lot of things that could potentially confuse our opponent,” Belk said. “But most of all it’s player friendly and we want to be able to play fast and play physical and play smart football and be consistent in whatever we do.”
At the center of it is Lynn, who appears to have impressed everyone in the building with how quickly he’s not just found his groove with a new staff and roster, but how he is managing trying to bring players up to speed while attempting to get the unit as a whole to feel and play in a cohesive fashion.
“The toughest thing in college is just the timeframe that you have,” Lynn said. “You don’t have a ton of time to meet, so you have to be very efficient with how you install. You don’t have a ton of time on the field. You have to be very efficient with how you do your walkthroughs.”
With a limited amount of time and what amounts to a new language that Lynn has to teach and implement within his staff and throughout the unit, USC’s defense has gone through a fast tracked education between spring practice and fall camp. Lynn, for his part, has tried his best to keep things simple enough to be digestible but not diluted to the point where they are not effective.
“[Lynn] does an outstanding job of compartmentalizing what we’re doing from a teaching standpoint,” Entz said. “If we can teach the game in terms of concepts and rules and principles, then you should be able to have some volume to the defense. If you have to go out there and your players are memorizing what’s going on, you’re going to struggle a little bit.”
There’s no certainty that Lynn’s scheme and approach will pay dividends, especially not immediately, but the preparation has put USC in a position to immediately improve upon last year’s performance. The bar may be low, but the goals Lynn and the rest of the defense have for themselves are much higher.
“You’ve seen what he did in one year at UCLA made them one of the best defenses in the country,” linebacker and Oregon State transfer Mascarenas-Arnold said. “And so for me, I expect nothing less. I don’t think anybody else on the team wouldn’t say that either. So I think we have the potential to be one of the best.”
MUCH OF HOW USC navigates a schedule that includes LSU, Michigan, Penn State, Washington and Notre Dame may still come down to Moss. This is a Riley offense and team, after all, where the attacking unit is the show and the quarterback is the orchestra’s first chair.
Williams had his approach and style; Moss has his own. The connectivity between them should have the intended effect. Several of the players that Moss first practiced with on scout team during his early years at USC are now projected starters themselves.
“I’ve already had chemistry with Miller because that first year we were both here, we always connected in practice really well,” said wide receiver Kyle Ford, who was at USC for two full seasons before transferring to UCLA last year and back to USC this year. “Now it’s just a continuation of what that’s been. I’m glad that we didn’t lose it over the years.”
It is not quite an intangible, but Moss’ commitment to USC over the years is now reaping its rewards, not just in the form of a starting job he coveted, but more in the form of how his peers, teammates and all of those who will take cues from him as a leader now view him.
“He’s going into his fourth year at USC and so I think all the guys have a different level of respect for him and what he’s done his whole journey,” Branch said. “He is far and away the leader of this football team. I think he has really just been able to bring the team together. Everyone rallies around him.”
Moss’ six touchdowns in the DirecTv Holiday Bowl that all but secured him the starting gig was just the beginning. Since, he admitted he’s gone through a learning curve as he tries to ensure that his performance in December is not remembered as an aberration, a mere blip on his college career, but rather a harbinger of what he can do once this season begins.
Now that he’s in the driver’s seat, Moss has gained a level of comfort and personal experience inside Riley’s system. Everything he tried to soak up while sitting on the bench the past two seasons is now ready to be put to use.
“At the end of the day, I think it’s more about what you do with it than just being named the starter,” Moss said. “It’s about going and winning games.”
Riley, Moss, Lynn and the rest of USC’s team know as well as anyone that in the end, all of the extra work, the effort put into weight training or nutrition, into improving the makeup of this team, can be rendered meaningless in the span of a game, even a play. For all the change USC is experiencing in its first year without Williams, there is one thing that remains: it will all come down to results.
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Alden Gonzalez
LOS ANGELES — Shohei Ohtani jogged off the pitcher’s mound and leaned against the dugout railing while strapping on his elbow guard and batting gloves. He was thrown a towel to wipe the sweat off his face, then walked to the batter’s box to face San Diego Padres ace Dylan Cease without taking any practice swings.
With that, Ohtani began his quest to once again do what many in the sport consider impossible.
Ohtani made his pitching debut from Dodger Stadium on Monday, giving up a run in his lone inning of work, then struck out in his first plate appearance as the Los Angeles Dodgers’ designated hitter, marking the first time he has pitched and hit in a game since Aug. 23, 2023. He would eventually finish 2-4 with two RBIs in his club’s 6-3 victory.
Ohtani is close to 21 months removed from a second repair of his right ulnar collateral ligament but faced hitters only three times before essentially rejoining the Dodgers’ rotation, his last session, from Petco Park in San Diego last Tuesday, spanning three simulated innings and 44 pitches.
Ohtani communicated to the Dodgers that facing hitters hours before games, then cooling off and having to ramp back up to DH later that night, was more taxing on his body than doing both simultaneously, prompting him to return to pitching sooner than expected. These initial starts will basically function as the continuation of Ohtani’s pitching rehab. On Monday, he was basically utilized as an opener.
Ohtani reached 99.9 mph and 100.2 mph with his fastball but also uncorked a wild pitch while utilizing 28 pitches to record the first three outs. Fernando Tatis Jr. led off with a bloop single and Luis Arraez followed with a line-drive single. Ohtani should have recorded a strikeout of Manny Machado, who went around on a two-strike swing. But first-base umpire Ryan Blakney ruled otherwise, bringing the count to 2-2 and later prompting a sacrifice fly to score the game’s first run.
Ohtani followed by inducing groundouts to Gavin Sheets and Xander Bogaerts, and with that, his pitching debut was over.
The Dodgers hope it’s the first of many starts.
Ohtani, 30, functioned as a transformative two-way player from 2021 to 2023, winning two unanimous MVPs and also finishing as the runner-up to Aaron Judge. On offense, Ohtani slashed .277/.379/.585 with 124 home runs and 57 stolen bases. On the mound, he posted a 2.84 ERA with 542 strikeouts and 143 walks in 428⅓ innings.
Top Boston Red Sox officials said the team traded Rafael Devers to the San Francisco Giants on Sunday because they could not find “alignment” with their star slugger, whose relationship with the organization degraded after he declined a request by the team to switch positions for the second time this season.
In a 40-minute media availability Monday night, Red Sox president and CEO Sam Kennedy and chief baseball officer Craig Breslow defended the decision to trade the 28-year-old Devers, a three-time All-Star in the second season of a 10-year, $313.5 million contract. The deal, which came after a sweep of the rival New York Yankees extended Boston’s winning streak to five games, roiled Red Sox fans still embittered by Boston trading future Hall of Famer Mookie Betts to the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2020.
Though Kennedy and Breslow acknowledged the disappointment in the trade that netted Boston left-handed starter Kyle Harrison, outfield prospect James Tibbs III, right-handed reliever Jordan Hicks and right-hander Jose Bello, they noted the financial flexibility the deal gives the organization, with San Francisco taking on the remaining $254 million of Devers’ contract.
Pointing to the ability to add talent as the July 31 trade deadline approaches, Breslow said: “This is in no way signifying a waving of the white flag on 2025. We are as committed as we were six months ago to putting a winning team on the field, to competing for the division and making a deep postseason run.”
He also added, “I do think that there is a real chance that at the end of the season we’re looking back and we’ve won more games than we otherwise would’ve.”
At 38-36 following a win Monday night against Seattle, the Red Sox are in fourth place in the AL East but hold the final AL wild-card playoff spot. Their new-look lineup featured first baseman Abraham Toro hitting in Devers’ typical No. 2 spot and rookie outfielder Roman Anthony, who hit his first big league home run Monday, batting third.
Devers, who had been with the Red Sox organization since signing out of the Dominican Republic at 16, went from a fundamental part of Boston’s future to the latest ex-Red Sox player in a matter of months. The organization had spent the winter ensuring Devers would remain at third base, the position he had played his whole career. When Boston signed third baseman Alex Bregman on the eve of spring training, Devers was asked to move to designated hitter. He refused before eventually relenting.
A season-ending injury to first baseman Triston Casas in early May compelled Breslow to inquire about Devers’ willingness to move to first. He spurned the idea and criticized the organization, prompting owner John Henry, Kennedy and Breslow to fly to Kansas City, where the Red Sox were playing, and talk through their issues.
Despite the strong play of Toro and Romy Gonzalez at first, the issues persisted. Though neither Kennedy nor Breslow would expound specifically on where there was misalignment between the parties, Devers rejecting a second position switch soured an organization that gave him the largest deal in franchise history.
“We had certain expectations that went with that contract,” Kennedy said. “And when we came to the conclusion that we did not have a full alignment, we moved on.”
Breslow said the Red Sox talked about Devers with multiple teams — and two rival general managers told ESPN on Monday that Devers’ name came up in conversation about potential deals. Ultimately, Boston pulled off the polarizing trade with San Francisco, which agreed to inherit the entirety of Devers’ contract and in exchange sent back a package of talent that paled in production compared to Devers.
Over nine seasons with the Red Sox, Devers hit .279/.349/.510 with 215 home runs and 696 RBIs in 1,053 games. He represented the last player from Boston’s most recent World Series-winning team in 2018 — a group to which Kennedy and Breslow alluded when emphasizing the organization’s goals in moving a player who was hitting .272/.401/.504 this season.
“I do think that there is a real chance that at the end of the season, we’re looking back and we’ve won more games than we otherwise would’ve.”
Red Sox chief baseball officer Craig Breslow
“As we think about the identity and the culture and the environment that is created by great teams,” Breslow said, “there was something amiss here, and it was something that we needed to act decisively to course correct.”
Said Kennedy: “We did what we felt was in the best interest of the Red Sox on and off the field to win championships and to continue to ferociously and relentlessly pursue a culture that we want everyone in that clubhouse to embody and doing everything in their power night in and night out to help the team.”
The two continued returning to the word “alignment” — Kennedy used it nine times, Breslow five — to rationalize the deal. They pointed to allowing the team’s young core — which includes Anthony and infielders Kristian Campbell and Marcelo Mayer, all of whom were among the top 15 prospects in MLB entering the season — to receive regular playing time as a benefit, with more at-bats available in the DH slot.
“I understand why the initial reaction would be that it’d be tough to sit here and say when you move a player of Raffy’s caliber, when you take that bat out of the lineup, how could I sit here and say that we’re a better team?” Breslow said. “And I acknowledge on paper we’re not going to have the same lineup that we did, but this isn’t about the game that is played on paper. This is about the game that’s played on the field and ultimately about winning the most games that we can. And in order to do that, we’re trying to put together the most functional and complete team that we can.”
The Red Sox have squandered the benefit of the doubt with a fan base that saw the team win four championships from 2004 to 2018. Dealing Betts for a paltry return remains a sticking point with a wide swath of fans, and one of Breslow’s first deals after taking over following the firing of his predecessor, Chaim Bloom, was trading left-hander Chris Sale to Atlanta, where he won the National League Cy Young Award last year.
“I’ll put our record up against anybody else’s in Major League Baseball over the last 24 years,” Kennedy said. “We’re incredibly proud of what we’ve built here. We’ve got more trophies and banners to show for it than any other organization in Major League Baseball.”
Saying that Devers “means so much to that group, means so much to the organization, to the city of Boston,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora nevertheless stood behind the deal, saying he believes Harrison (who was optioned to Triple-A) and Hicks (on the injured list) will help the team this season.
“We’ve got to keep going. That’s the bottom line,” Cora said. “We put ourselves in a good spot. We have played good baseball for an extended period of time. Now we have to do it without Raffy, but at the same time, we added some pieces that we do believe are going to help us.”
Breslow and Kennedy each expressed disappointment over the handling of the Devers situation, with Breslow saying, “I need to own things I could have done better,” particularly in communicating. They agreed, though, that the decisiveness with which they agreed to deal Devers — regardless of the public outcry — was done in service of something larger.
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Jorge Castillo
NEW YORK — Hours before making his season debut, Yankees designated hitter Giancarlo Stanton was in the batter’s box inside an empty Yankee Stadium on Monday afternoon hitting off a high-speed pitching machine. Atop his list of preparation priorities was being ready to handle elite velocity. That, he believes, will best determine whether he will succeed in his return from tendon injuries in both elbows.
Stanton’s first test, though it came in a loss, was a success: The slugger went 2-for-4 with three hard-hit balls and a double in an 11-inning, 1-0 defeat to the Los Angeles Angels.
“With not as many at-bats under my belt, that’s going to be the most important,” Stanton said of hitting velocity. “Just make sure I’m ready. See the ball early. Normal things you would say midseason, but just emphasize it a little more now.”
Stanton was sidelined through Sunday, missing the Yankees’ first 70 games. He played through a “high level” of joint pain in both elbows in 2024, including during the postseason when he smashed seven home runs in 14 games and was named American League Championship Series MVP, but he was shut down from swinging a bat in January until late March, delaying his readiness for the season.
Batting fifth Monday in his first major league action since Game 5 of the 2024 World Series, Stanton received a standing ovation from the home crowd when he was introduced for his first plate appearance. He then hacked away.
He swung at the first pitch he saw — a 96-mph sinker from Angels right-hander Jose Soriano — and cracked a 101.5 mph groundout to the third baseman.
He roped a 111.1 mph line drive single to left field in his second at-bat for his first hit of 2025 and struck out swinging in his third at-bat before clobbering a 102.9 mph leadoff double down the left-field line in the ninth inning.
Stanton’s night ended there when Jasson Dominguez replaced him at second base as a pinch-runner. The Yankees wound up spoiling the scoring opportunity. They have gone 20 innings without scoring a run, a skid that goes back to the ninth inning of a loss to the Boston Red Sox on Saturday.
“It’s great to be back,” Stanton said. “Obviously, want to win, but it’s good to be back out there. I saw the ball pretty well besides one at-bat. So we’re just working on that, making sure my timing’s geared up and get rolling.”
Stanton, 35, was eligible for reinstatement from the 60-day injured list in late May, but the Yankees, not desperate for offense and with multiple choices for DH, did not rush him back.
He began a rehab assignment last week, appearing in three games over consecutive days for Double-A Somerset after an extended period taking swings off machines and in live batting practice. He went 3-for-11 with a double, four RBIs, a walk and three strikeouts for Somerset.
The Yankees have 16 games over the next 16 days, but manager Aaron Boone does not expect Stanton, whose 429 career home runs lead all active players, to play every day. Stanton’s availability will partly depend on his next-day recovery after a game.
“I would think that things might come up from time to time and that could play into different things on a given day if you feel like it’s best to give him a day,” Boone said. “But I think he’s built some good momentum here over the last couple of months with it. The strength in his hands and things like that has returned in a good way so certainly something we’ll pay attention to but feel like we’re in a pretty good spot.”
Boone has the luxury to play it on the safer side with an offense that thrived without Stanton, the 2017 National League MVP. The Yankees entered Monday ranked second in the majors with a 123 weighted runs created plus and .794 OPS with Ben Rice, Aaron Judge and Dominguez primarily cycling through the DH spot.
That’s where things become complicated for New York. Stanton’s return will, as it stands, present a daily lineup puzzle for Boone to solve — not only in the DH slot, but in the outfield where he has Judge plus three players (Dominguez, Cody Bellinger and Trent Grisham) for two spots (center field and left field). Decisions will mostly come down to workload and matchups.
Paul Goldschmidt, another former MVP, and Domínguez, one of baseball’s top prospects entering the season, were the odd players out Monday, though both entered the game late.
“I’ve talked to them, and we know what the goal is,” Boone said. “And right now it’s to get to the playoffs and try and win a division and then obviously from there, trying to get to and win a World Series. So, making sure we have everyone on the same page and the buy-in. And there’s going to be days when maybe a guy deserves to be in there, isn’t. Everyone’s not going to be happy about it all the time and that’s OK.”
Said Stanton: “Whatever is best for us to win, that’s important. And the guys that are going to be starting are going to come in huge pinch-hit spots. So, in that opportunity, it’s usually a chance to win a game anyway so, yeah, we’ll work with it.”
Stanton’s return perhaps most impacts Rice, who has started 43 of the Yankees’ 71 games as their DH. The second-year player, who started at first base Monday, is batting .229 with 12 home runs and a .769 OPS this season.
Boone on Monday repeated that he plans to occasionally have Rice start at catcher to alleviate the logjam and get his bat in the lineup more often.
Rice, 26, was drafted as a catcher and spent most of his minor league career behind the plate, but he has yet to start at the position for the Yankees since making his major league debut last season. Rice has tallied just 6⅔ innings behind the plate in the majors.
Austin Wells and J.C. Escarra have split time at catcher this season, with Wells starting 52 of the team’s 70 games behind the dish.
“I see him playing quite a bit,” Boone said of Rice. “Again, just kind of the matchups. As far as the catching component, I do plan on getting him back there at some point. I don’t know how frequent it would be. Because, again, I really value what J.C.’s done back there. As you’ve seen lately, I do value getting Austin his days so there’ll be a day I get him back there and that can factor into things a little bit.”
The Yankees designated utility man Pablo Reyes for assignment to make room on the active roster for Stanton.
Also Monday, Boone said right-hander Jake Cousins is scheduled to undergo Tommy John surgery Wednesday.
Cousins spent the first three years of his big league career with the Milwaukee Brewers before joining New York last season. Cousins became a significant part of New York’s bullpen, posting a 2.37 ERA across 37 games during the regular season before allowing five runs in six postseason appearances.
The Yankees expected Cousins to return before the All-Star break when he was placed on the injured list with a forearm strain to begin the season. But his recovery was stalled by a pectoral injury and he was pulled off a recent rehab assignment with elbow trouble. He is now expected to miss a significant portion of the 2026 season.
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