⚡ CFB Dashboard

The 2026 USC football regular season is already a quarter of the way finished, as crazy as that may seem with it barely halfway into the month of September. But with the Trojans opening the season early with a Week 0 game against San Jose State before rounding out their non-conference slate with Fresno State and Louisiana, they have already played three of the 12 scheduled games. After three games, the biggest question marks that have arisen for the Trojans are the play of the defense, and in particular, the reserve defenders. There has been a notable drop off once the starters exit the game, most starkly represented during the Louisiana game. When the starting defense (including rotation of Elbert Hill IV and Marcelles Williams at the cornerback position) played together as a unit, they allowed 2.7 yards per play, giving up 59 yards over 22 snaps. When USC rotated in the second-string defensive line, linebackers and/or safeties, it allowed 299 yards on 30 plays (10.0 yards per play). Perhaps nowhere was it quite as evident the difference as with Louisiana quarterback Lunch Winfield's ability to make plays on the ground. Using Winfield's legs is part of the Ragin' Cajuns' offensive game plan, but USC's starters basically shut that avenue down while the reserves let Winfield run freely. He ran for 91 yards on 14 carries, including a sack by reserve defensive end Zuriah Fisher, but Winfield managed only 17 yards on six rush attempts against the starters. His seven carries and a sack with backup defenders in the game gained 74 yards with 70 coming on three big scrambles, including his 32-yard touchdown run on Louisiana's first drive of the fourth quarter. So we decided to take a look at the usage of players position by position and also look at the individual players' success rates using yards per play, which showcases which players are on the field when USC offense/defense is at its best and the opposite. The statistic can be drastically affected by big plays, and one player obviously doesn't determine the outcome of every individual play, but we find the metric is useful in comparing players within a position group. To balance the metric, which is weighted toward how well the team does on each play, we've also included each player's overall grade through three games from Pro Football Focus, who grade each player individually on each snap. Hopefully, this gives a glimpse of how players are playing as individuals and as cohesive units through the first three quarter of the season: