LOS ANGELES — The moment has finally arrived for USC’s defense, buzzing with a healthy dose of quasi-bulletin board material that spread fast across the college football landscape and was met with … shrugs. Deflections. A healthy dose, in return, of coyness.
“To be honest, I hadn’t seen it – I hadn’t really been, what is it on, like, I’m sure it’s on some social media?” defensive lineman Jamil Muhammad said Wednesday.
It came courtesy of one Will Campbell, all 6-foot-6 inches and 323 pounds of him, the All-SEC tackle sitting in a chair in LSU’s meeting room Tuesday and offering a declaration on LSU-USC to reporters during a media session.
“We know what we’re there for,” Campbell said of the weekend trip to Las Vegas, in a video taken by Sports Illustrated’s Zack Nagy. “It’s not to go to Caesar’s Palace. It’s to be in a fistfight.”
And this, during another media session, making plain his program’s intentions.
“Like I said, we’re gon’ run the ball, so I mean, that’s not something we’re hiding or trying to keep quiet,” Campbell said, describing LSU’s overall offensive approach. “I’m telling everybody right now, we are going to run the football. So you can take what you want with that.”
USC’s defensive front, for one, didn’t take a whole lot. Sophomore Braylan Shelby said Campbell’s comments “didn’t mean too much.” Transfer linebacker Easton Mascarenas-Arnold’s reaction was to simply “put the blinders on.” Fellow linebacker Mason Cobb even said he hadn’t logged into Twitter in a while.
But Campbell’s comments only solidified the reality that a physical LSU program will present in Las Vegas come Sunday afternoon. There is no tune-up game on this Big Ten slate, no Rice or San Jose State like previous openers in the Lincoln Riley era to run up a scoreboard at the start of fall. This will be a war, from the minute helmets are tugged onto sweaty brows in triple-digit Sin City heat, facing a national power from the South ready to run the football.
And for all USC’s expressed philosophical changes in the offseason, a new defensive staff and new defensive talent and a purported 1,400 pounds of total weight gain, LSU’s offensive front and ground game will serve as a “great test,” as defensive coordinator D’Anton Lynn put it Wednesday.
“We’re prepared,” Lynn put it, simply. “We’ve known what the challenge is going to be, since I got the job here.”
Nine talented backs bristle in LSU’s room, from senior veteran Josh Williams to sophomore Kaleb Jackson, leftover carries from a Jayden Daniels-led rushing attack last year having to fan out somewhere. And four of LSU’s five most-utilized offensive linemen return from a strong group in 2023 that only allowed eight sacks, according to Pro Football Focus.
“You could just tell by the tenacity, the ferocity – you could tell that they’re very prideful in being a good O-line, you can tell they like to enjoy and do what they do,” Mascarenas-Arnold said Wednesday.
“But, as a defense, we fear nobody.”
Memories of USC’s group last season have been washed away by most, by this point, with Lynn’s brand-new scheme installed and inspiring verbal drooling from a range of defensive players. But there are plenty of familiar faces, still, who will line up against that powerful LSU line on Sunday with the memory of a run defense that finished 119th out of 133 FBS programs in rushing yards allowed per game.
“Until you have a really real chance to show what you’ve been working on, and how much better you’ve gotten, what you’ve did and what everybody saw is going to be on their minds until you change it,” Muhammad said.
Sure – perhaps nobody will hit Caesar’s Palace. But Sunday, still, will be a “show,” as Muhammad put it.
“And I can’t wait to see myself, you know, my brothers, showcase what we’ve been working on,” Muhammad said. “Showcase how hard we’ve been working, and how ready we are for the moment.”
