USC changes QB after rocky start to the season
Freshman in, Junior out
After a whooping 52-6 loss to Alabama and a 27-10 defeat at Stanford, an unranked USC Football’s Head Coach, Clay Helton announced that Redshirt Freshman Sam Darnold will take over as QB from Redshirt Junior Max Browne. This change comes after 3 games, 2 losses and a 45-7 win against Utah State.
Pre-season Clay said, “Hopefully, it’s seasons to be honest,” when asked about Max Browne being his QB pick. However, after USC’s worst start to their season since Pete Carroll’s 2001 team, things had to change according to Coach Helton.
Browne’s stats show that he completed 63.2% of his passes covering 474 yards, one touchdown and 2 interceptions – good enough for a USC QB? You tell me…
Darnold, originally set up to be the back-up QB, has played in all three of USC’s games this season has covered 136 yards completing 14/22 passes, a couple of TDs and an interception.
But now Darnold has to step up his game and prove worthy of being USC’s first-choice QB. As Clay Helton told Yahoo, “The realism of football is when you’re 1-2 and you scored one touchdown against Alabama and Stanford, I wanted to see a spark in our offense and I hope that Sam can bring that.”
This is the first time since 1998 that USC has changed its QB mid-season – the last time being when freshman Carson Palmer was brought onto the scene by then-coach Paul Hackett.
Fast forwarding from 1998 to the present, let’s hope that Sam Darnold proves to be a better QB than Max Browne otherwise Clay Helton’s exit may be a debate for the near future if the historic Trojans underperform expectations this season.
Then again, we are Trojans, so..
Fight on!