The countdown to USC’s 2025 football season is formally on! The Trojans kick off their new campaign 14 days from at the moment. You want one thing to enable you whereas away the times and hours in the spring and summer season. This is a technique to accomplish that. In this new sequence, countdown to kickoff, we will likely be counting down the times by highlighting a notable Trojan who wore every quantity. Today, we have a look at former USC quarterback Sam Darnold.
Position: Quarterback
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Years performed at USC: 2015-2017
Career highlights: After redshirting his first 12 months on campus in 2015, Darnold spent the primary three video games of the 2016 season because the backup to Max Browne. With the Trojans off to a 1-2 begin, nonetheless, head coach Clay Helton elected to make a change and inserted Darnold into the beginning lineup. USC misplaced Darnold’s first begin at Utah, however didn’t lose once more for the remainder of the season after that. The Trojans ended their 2016 marketing campaign on a nine-game successful streak, culminating in an instantaneous traditional 52-49 Rose Bowl victory over Penn State, in which Darnold threw for 453 yards and 5 touchdowns.
The following season, Darnold led USC to its first convention title in 9 years, because the Trojans defeated Stanford in the Pac-12 Championship Game. That 12 months, he additionally earned first-time all-Pac-12 honors and have become the primary USC quarterback to throw for over 4,000 yards in a season. However, the Trojans ended the 12 months in disappointing vogue with a 24-7 blowout loss to Ohio State in the Cotton Bowl.
After USC: Following his redshirt sophomore season, Darnold declared for the 2018 NFL Draft, the place the New York Jets chosen him with the third general choose. However, he struggled his first few years in the league (as most Jets quarterbacks have a tendency to do), and appeared on monitor in direction of being a profession backup at greatest.
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Last season with the Minnesota Vikings, nonetheless—Darnold’s fourth completely different staff in seven years in the league—he lastly had a breakthrough season. He completed the 12 months with a career-high 4,319 passing yards and 35 passing touchdowns. After signing with the Seattle Seahawks this previous offseason, Darnold will look to replicate final 12 months’s success in the Pacific Northwest this fall.
This article initially appeared on Trojans Wire: USC football countdown to kickoff recalls Trojans QB Sam Darnold