Lincoln Riley from the USC here. How's it going, coach? We're good. We're good. How are you guys? We're good. This is a fun experience for you, I'm sure, like a little bit closer to home. How much are we letting Elijah, you know, Mackay, the rest of the squad? Are we taking in all of Las Vegas on this? No, this is a quick strike mission right here.

Yeah, in and out.

Yeah, the only way to do Vegas safely, right?

Yeah, 100%.

Let's start with your quarterback right now.

We talk about the sport, we cover it, and sometimes one of the phrases we like to say is

we judge a team, especially in this era, by action, but also by inaction. And that when you're choosing to commit to that quarterback and not trying to bring somebody else in, it means there's a lot of confidence. So what did you see across last season, and maybe even into the spring from Jaden, that really makes you feel good going into 2025? Well, first the four games that he played for us.

We went three and one.

He gave us a great chance to beat Notre Dame.

He made some big-time plays against four really good defenses.

I mean, those were four challenging teams to kind of start off your USC football career.

And so I think the way he played in those games, the way our team responded to him,

the way he played in clutch situations, like really showed a lot to me. And then it told me like,

all right, the things that we need him to improve at are very doable, right? These are the things

that, like, you can really fix. Like, it's tough to make a guy a whole lot faster, you know,

or make his arm a whole lot strong. But like, are things we can fix and he's a hard working kid. He, he, the game is really important to him. His teammates are important to him. Winning is important to him. So I just felt like we could work with that and wanted to invest in him and the rest of our quarterback room feeling feeling like we have what it takes to be a great quarterback room.

And so the focus this year has been, you know, I think two things for him.

One, the leadership piece, finding his voice as a leader, kind of knowing that he's that guy for us.

And then I think the second one has been just minimizing some of the

big mistakes. And that's for a lot of young quarterbacks, as we know, right? It's, you may make

some great plays, but are you offsetting those with big mistakes, right? If your bad plays,

you know, go watch Tom Brady in his prime, right? His bad plays were incompletions, were ugly

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