LOS ANGELES — The new kid didn’t talk much. Maybe he just wasn’t quite ready, Woody Marks reflected, to open up. His actions spoke just fine.
They arrived at USC’s campus around the same time last winter, two high-octane offensive transfers, former Mississippi State running back Marks and UNLV quarterback Jayden Maiava. But they faced a radically different situation. Veteran Marks had an uncontested path to USC’s starting running back job. Sophomore Maiava walked into a locker room that was already united behind born-Trojan Miller Moss at QB.
In the summer, Marks and Maiava ran next to one another. Marks, a stocky back with sneaky burners, would beat him. But over his shoulder, always, he could feel the youngster pushing to keep up.
“That’s just to show, like, he never gonna quit,” Marks said, on Wednesday. “So you have a teammate like that, you always want to fight with him.”
The Maiava who strolled in front of reporters on Wednesday night, long after the sun had set on USC’s Howard Jones Field, was a different man altogether than the one who had mumbled his way through his first scrum in the spring. This Maiava had paid his dues, strolling across the turf with a slight smirk and 6-foot-4 shoulders pulled high. He had never been very vocal. He needed to be, now, he realized, suddenly tabbed as USC’s starting QB in a program that has been molded for months around Moss’ leadership.
“How’s everybody doing?” Maiava cracked, unprompted, as he pinned a tiny microphone to his chest. “Why’s everybody so quiet?”
On Monday – not coming via a phone call, as a source previously told the Southern California News Group – head coach Lincoln Riley pulled Maiava into his office and delivered the news that might be too late to change USC’s present but could radically shift the program’s future. Maiava, who had bid his time for months since losing a quarterback competition to Moss in the fall, was USC’s new starter. He was excited, Maiava said. But his first thought process was simple.
Let’s practice. Let’s go get reps.
“Hopefully,” Maiava said Wednesday night, “everyone is on the same page that I am. We just want to win games.”
The talent is there, with proven tape from his redshirt freshman season at UNLV and a “cannon arm,” as Marks said. The development is, too, as quarterback coach Ryan Porter told the Southern California News Group he felt sitting behind Moss ultimately benefitted Maiava. The key, to a successful late-season run as USC’s starting quarterback, will be Maiava galvanizing a USC program that has largely drawn its identity from Moss’ mindset.
Maiava, though, knows it.
“I’ve just got to build that relationship with the receivers,” he said Wednesday, “and be more vocal, and be better for anybody.”
Deeper than football, Moss’ relationships span USC’s roster, a quarterback who had stuck it out in Southern California from Clay Helton to Riley. Sophomore receivers Ja’Kobi Lane and Duce Robinson spent this past Father’s Day with Moss and his dad; on Tuesday morning, Lane declared “It’s cooked for me” in a tweet before deleting and clarifying he was “beyond happy” for Maiava. Key tight end Lake McRee, too, has long been one of Moss’ best friends.
“Coach Riley’s been doing this a long time,” McRee said Wednesday, when asked about the quarterback change. “Whatever he goes with, I’m going to trust. He’s been through this a lot longer than I have.”
Maiava arrived, in the winter, not two weeks after Moss captivated the nation with a six-touchdown performance in the Holiday Bowl. The UNLV transfer wanted the job, sure. But he, certainly, didn’t try to seize immediate verbal hold of USC’s program. Maiava had been through it already, the previous season at UNLV, elevated from the bench to the Rebels’ starter early in the year.
He had learned, from that season, there was only so much he could control. Effort was one. Attitude was another.
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“You’re either the cure, or you’re the cancer, you know?” Maiava said, describing his mindset entering USC’s program. “So, like, all I try and do is be the cure for the team.”
From an on-field perspective, it’s too much to expect Maiava to be an instant cure for a USC offense that has sputtered at times this season. Riley indicated Tuesday his offense wouldn’t change drastically with the more mobile Maiava, and McRee affirmed things during two bye-week practices since the change were “pretty much the same.”
But Marks said Wednesday the change, to him, didn’t come as a surprise. It had been a topic among the fan base, at least, for weeks, wanting USC to evaluate what it had in the quarterback with the fleet feet and pretty deep ball.
Maiava is 11 months removed from being the new kid, and ready to lead.
“I’m’a lay my life on the line for them,” Maiava said of his teammates. “I’m gonna be my brother’s keeper. So hopefully they do the same.”