Lincoln Riley: We're Not Going To 'Build Our Roster Out Of Fear'

USC football announced their 2022 February signing class on Wednesday, which features 13 transfers and one high school prospect.

USC football secured the commitment of former Oklahoma quarterback Caleb Williams, after losing two QB's to the transfer portal this offseason. Former Trojans, Kedon Slovis [Pitt] and Jaxson Dart [Ole Miss] both left USC for other programs. 

Williams decision came down-to-the-wire. According to Riley, the freshman registered for classes late Friday, which was USC's deadline for spring enrollment. Riley discussed the timing of Williams' commitment during USC's National Signing Day press conference, and revealed his 'excitement' over reuniting with his former QB.

"With the transfer portal right now and the fact there's really no guard rails, players can leave virtually 365 days a year if they choose, and that's just part of how it is right now. And so, you can't predict all of that, you know, and you can almost drive yourself crazy trying to," Riley said Wednesday.

"And so for me, I think from our standpoint has been we are going to be honest with all parties involved, whether it's a current player on our roster or somebody that we're recruiting, about what we're doing, about future plans. Try to be very transparent, but we're not going to recruit or try to build our roster out of fear that people will leave. You cannot operate that way, and we're just not going to. 

So we're going to build the best roster we can with people that want to be here, that believe in the vision and believe in this program. And so excited, though, the way that it played out. Again, it was unique. And you certainly get that there's a lot of unique things going on right now in college football and recruiting in general. But I'm certainly excited that Caleb [Williams] chose to be here. 

The timeline of it. I don't know if I want to get into specifics, but he got into school, or registered, whatever we want to say, late Friday and that was that."

Williams spent one season at OU. He threw for 1,912 yards and 21 touchdowns in 2021. 

USC announced the signing of fourteen new players on February 2. Their names include, DL Earl Barquet , CB Mekhi Blackmon, WR Terrell Bynum, RB Travis Dye, OT Bobby Haskins, OLB Romello Height, RB Austin Jones, ILB Shane Lee, CB Latrell McCutchin, WR Brenden Rice, DL Tyrone Taleni, QB Caleb Williams, WR CJ Williams and WR Mario Williams.

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