When he first arrived at USC last January, Bryan Jackson was still a few months short of his 18th birthday. The bright-eyed freshman running back had graduated from high school early, in the hope that he’d hit the ground running at USC. And right away it was clear how quickly that ground was moving beneath his feet.
But Jackson, a 230-pound power back, resolved not to let the speed of it all swallow him up. He watched closely as Woody Marks, the Trojans’ workhorse and Jackson’s roommate on the road, worked his way through a stellar season. He took note of Marks’ every move, how he arrived early and stayed late, how he took care of his body, how he watched film, filing it all away for when his moment finally came.
It might have seemed then as if Jackson would have a while to wait, what with Marks leading the way and standout sophomore Quinten Joyner waiting in the wings. But Marks opted out of the bowl game, and Joyner entered the transfer portal, and suddenly, the keys to USC’s backfield for Friday’s Las Vegas Bowl against Texas A&M were in the hands of one of the youngest players on USC’s roster, a freshman with barely 20 carries to his name.
“It’s an opportunity for me,” Jackson said recently, “one of the biggest of my life.”
Similar circumstances are playing out all over college football this month, with the transfer portal ravaging rosters and potential NFL prospects opting out of bowls en masse. At USC, 19 players have already entered the transfer portal, while three more — Marks, center Jonah Monheim and cornerback Jaylin Smith — chose to skip the bowl game in lieu of preparing for the draft.
That’s left plenty of opportunities up for grabs over the last month, up and down USC’s lineup. In addition to a brand new backfield, USC will roll with two new offensive linemen — Kilian O’Connor at center and Tobias Raymond at right tackle — and be without three of its top five receivers from this season. On both sides of the ball, young players are expected to play major roles Friday as USC looks ahead to next season.
“There’s a part of this that feels like the last game of this year and in some ways feels like the first game of next year,” USC coach Lincoln Riley said.
Texas A&M coach Mike Elko, on the other hand, said he has already basically put the Aggies’ season behind them. With three starters out along the Aggies’ defensive front, Elko said Friday that his staff had approached the bowl more like “an opener” than the final stamp on their season. He expects that USC, too, will look far different than it did just a few weeks ago.
“You’re playing with guys in new spots, new faces,” Riley said. “Even the preparation for it is a little bit different because you don’t have your full roster. But you’ve got to adapt. I think going through what we did last year helped us. I think we’re less surprised by what happened and understood how to plan from the beginning.”
Depth was actually far more dire last December, when USC had just 53 players active for the Holiday Bowl. Still, USC rode an army of reserves and a six-touchdown showing from backup quarterback Miller Moss to a rollicking win that gave the Trojans a wave of momentum heading into the offseason.
That momentum didn’t mean much by the time USC’s first Big Ten slate was in full swing, as Moss was benched and the Trojans stumbled to a 6-6 finish. But it was out of last bowl season that several building blocks for future USC teams first emerged. Among them starting left tackle Elijah Paige and standout receiver Ja’Kobi Lane, who burst onto the scene with two touchdowns in the Holiday Bowl.
Those opportunities, Riley reiterated Thursday, can be incredibly valuable.
“It’s a chance to showcase the program, it’s a chance for young guys to play,” Riley said. “It’s another opportunity, and we just don’t get that many in this game.”
It could prove especially consequential, once again, to USC’s plans at the quarterback position. Riley has yet to bring in another passer in the transfer portal and said earlier this month that any new quarterback added would serve only as “depth” behind Jayden Maiava. But Maiava was brought in last January under similar circumstances, only to displace Moss as the starter by November.
He could have another quarterback to contend with soon enough in five-star freshman Husan Longstreet, who joined the team this month for practices and was a part of the bowl festivities in Las Vegas. The circumstances were already unusual enough for Maiava this week, as USC practiced on the campus of Nevada Las Vegas, the school he left to join USC.
“He never expected anything other than for us to coach him hard and develop him,” Riley said of his quarterback, “and he was ready when his opportunity came.”
That’s the attitude Jackson has tried to carry into bowl season, preparing as if this were his moment to seize control of USC’s backfield for 2025. He’ll share carries with another young back, A’Marion Peterson, on Friday, before soon enough another ball carrier —New Mexico’s Eli Sanders — joins the mix. The outlook for USC’s rushing attack may only get muddier from there.
Riley called it “a tremendous opportunity for [Jackson and Peterson] to show that they can do the things that great backs in our offense have to do.”
It’s been a while since Riley has run with a true power back like Jackson, but the freshman has spent the bowl season trying to convince the coach that he’s ready, with plenty of cuts and bruises to prove it.
“It’s been a grind, man,” Jackson said with a smile.
But opportunities like this, he knows, don’t come along often.
“They gave me a chance to be the guy,” Jackson said, “so I’m giving it everything I have.”
