LOS ANGELES — They put him through a crash course in the fall, and Quinten Joyner quickly figured out he needed to write things down.
He put himself on the map in just the second game of his collegiate career last season, a 216-pound power back who seems to rip through every open hole in his field of vision. Afforded a few handoffs in a blowout victory, Joyner careened for a 47-yard touchdown. “Home-run speed,” as ex-USC receiver Mario Williams called it then. That was never the issue.
Joyner was entrusted with just one pass-blocking rep in 15 snaps. Therein lied the issue.
Slightly less than a year later, Joyner sat with new running backs coach Anthony Jones Jr. and the rest of USC’s backs in a meeting room before his redshirt freshman season. There, they dissected every single rep he had in that Nevada game, and in another, as Mississippi State transfer Woody Marks recalled. They chopped up tape of his runs. Of his pass plays. Of his protection. Told him where his hands should be, and what to do, and what not to do.
“Just take the inside away,” Joyner said, then in the fall, asked what he’d taken in terms of blocking tips from such sessions. “Just find a way to win.”
He is an ace in head coach Lincoln Riley’s sleeve on Saturdays, a back who Riley said in the spring pops “one big play a day” popping plenty in 2024 – averaging a stunning 9.1 yards a carry through seven games in 2024. And yet Riley has often left Joyner up his sleeve, the back’s sheer explosiveness not quite enough at times to mask those reps where he hasn’t been able to find a way to win. He’s shone with the ball in his hands; again, that’s never been the issue.
“He’s got to continue to become a better player,” Riley said Monday, “when the ball is not in his hands.”
The Trojans may need Joyner, ultimately, a little deeper than even the stark black ink of his efficiency recommends. At times through a confounding 3-4 stretch, USC’s offense has fallen out of sync in ways rarely seen in Riley’s coaching tenure, heavily reliant on early-down quick-hit looks through the air to establish momentum. Entering Saturday against Rutgers, quarterback Miller Moss ranks second in the entire FBS in pass attempts; USC’s passed on about 60% of its offensive plays this season, the highest distribution of any Riley-coached or -coordinated team since his first year as an offensive coordinator at East Carolina in 2010.
Riley shrugged it off when asked Thursday, pointing that USC’s offensive philosophy evolved week to week. But the full picture is a far cry from how Riley’s offenses looked at Oklahoma, built off a steady and creative ground game in which that pass distribution, traditionally, hovered more around 40%. And the constant heartbeat there, powering one of the most dynamic attacks in the nation, was a heavy two-back system. First came Samaje Perine and Joe Mixon; then came Trey Sermon and Kennedy Brooks.
“I think, when Lincoln really blew it up – when he implemented, when he really understood and got great at the run game,” former Oklahoma head coach Bob Stoops told the Southern California News Group in the fall. “The mix, and the flow, with all his great ideas throwing the football.”
Moss has aired out 50-plus passes twice, though, in just seven games this season at USC. Caleb Williams threw 50-plus once in his time coached by Riley. Baker Mayfield never did. Same goes for Kyler Murray and Jalen Hurts.
“At the end of the day, whether we hand it off 50 times or throw it 50 times, I’ve never gotten crazy caught up in that,” Riley said Monday. “You don’t know how each game is going to unfold.”
“But yeah, in a perfect world, do I want the quarterback throwing 50 times? Not necessarily. Although, like I said, if that’s what we’ve got to do, that’s what we’ve got to do.”
The solution, potentially, lies layers deep, in Riley’s evolving trust in Joyner. Senior Mississippi State transfer Woody Marks came to USC, in large part, to prove he could be a workhorse; he’s been one of the better all-around backs in the country in 2024, and it was a “little tough” to take Marks off the field, Riley admitted Monday. But USC’s head coach, too, hasn’t shown consistent faith in Joyner to spell him.
After Joyner ripped off a 75-yard touchdown against Penn State, he received exactly two more carries. He’s been entrusted, in total, with eight pass-blocking snaps in 2024. When Joyner committed a costly fumble in USC’s loss to Minnesota, Riley yanked him.
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“Quinten’s a good, young player,” Riley said, the week after the Minnesota game. “We’re never going to certainly toss a guy away after one mistake. But they’ve got to show progress and they’ve got to show that, ‘All right, I made this mistake once, it’s not going to happen again.’”
Earlier in the fall, Riley made clear his program wouldn’t be able to rely on one back every game. They still have, in large part, with Marks.
But his confidence in Joyner, Riley made clear Monday, is growing.
“He’s obviously made some big plays for us,” Riley said, “and we’re going to count on him to do so going forward.”