It may be too soon to quantify the impact that coach Gary Patterson has had on the USC defense, but one thing is for certain: It’s louder.
“There’s an insane amount of communication,” offensive lineman Tobias Raymond said. “I’m trying to get my call to the right guard, but the defense is so loud that I’m screaming at the top of my lungs to get it across.”
Patterson spent the second day of spring football practices walking from position group to position group, giving direction to each of them as he builds his brand of quick and efficient football among the Trojans.
The former TCU head coach has spent time with the team since he was first hired by USC in late January and wasted no time pushing his philosophy of overcommunication.
“Communication is really the No. 1 thing anywhere I went – Texas, Baylor, TCU,” Patterson told reporters. “Everybody had to become a quarterback. You’ve got to be able to communicate. And when you do, you’re a lot more accountable because they fix it. Coaches can’t be on the field, so it helps them. They work together to fix things.”
The defensive staff is introducing new one-word calls for the season, and Patterson is using a tried-and-true technique to do so. All players learn a full sentence per play call, then words are periodically whittled down until just one word remains in September.
Patterson told reporters in February that there is already a group of calls that players have learned well enough to start dropping words.
“It kind of helps separate the D-line, linebackers, DBs,” defensive end Braylan Shelby told reporters after practice Wednesday. “It allows us to hone in and tell us exactly what we’re doing, so there’s less thinking involved and more playing fast and more playing efficiently. That’s the whole idea behind the sentence-long calls.”
The Trojans ranked 13th out of 18 Big Ten Conference teams last season in total defense and allowed 350.8 yards a game. Defensive coordinator D’Anton Lynn left USC for the same position with Penn State at the end of the season, opening up a spot for Patterson.
Head coach Lincoln Riley said on the USC-run podcast “Trojans Live” on Monday that he had tried to hire Patterson two years ago.
“He wasn’t totally ready at that point,” Riley said on the show. “Anybody that gets to know Gary – he’s an all-in or all-out type of guy.
“There’s no halfway. He was interested in the job two years ago, but I think just where he was, he wasn’t ready to commit to it like he knew he was going to have to commit to it. He was in a very different place this time.”
Now that Patterson is at USC and on the field with the team, it’s starting to seem as if the Hall of Fame coach was worth the wait.
“I love him. He got a little old-school swag to him, too, which I like,” Shelby said. “I love when the defense is thriving as it is. He goes into great detail and what we need to do and how he wants things executed. And, I mean, we’re all loving that and jiving with it.”
Contact starts Friday
The Trojans’ first two practices of spring were non-contact, as required by the NCAA, and Friday will be the first contact practice of the monthlong series.
“Definitely exciting to get back in pads,” safety Kennedy Urlacher told reporters Wednesday. “We haven’t been in them for a little bit, so I’m excited to get back to it.”
USC was one of the earliest Power Four programs to begin spring football practices this year and the second in the Big Ten Conference to do so after Nebraska started Feb. 21. Purdue also began March 3 and two non-Big Ten schools – NC State and Clemson – kicked off in February.