USC Trojans head coach Lincoln Riley has had plenty of success coaching quarterbacks.
Riley’s five seasons as the coach of the Oklahoma Sooners saw him lead quarterbacks Baker Mayfield and Kyler Murray to Heisman Awards. Then, Riley’s first season with USC saw Oklahoma transfer Caleb Williams, who followed the head coach out west, win the Heisman Award as well.
It’s unsurprising that quarterbacks line up to play for Riley between recruiting and the transfer portal, but as the 40-year-old head coach noted last week, it’s vital to ensure that the position is not overrecruited.
“I don’t ever want to say never but it’s highly, highly unlikely this day and age,” Riley said Friday after USC’s practice when asked if he would ever recruit multiple quarterbacks in the same class. Especially with the fact that if you got in a situation where you just didn’t have enough guys, would you look at it? Maybe. The more likely scenario in this day and age and more common is you might take a high school guy and possibly look at somebody in the portal to add to it,” he added, via On3.
The emergence of the transfer portal has made it unwise to recruit multiple quarterbacks in the same class in recent years. It’s much easier and smarter to add a recruit and then add an established starter through the portal for the recruit to sit behind than having two quarterbacks starting the same year in the same class.
[USC Trojans, On3]
