- Kilian O’Connor, USC’s projected Week 1 starter at center, is out for the season with a knee injury.
- Coach Lincoln Riley named guard Tobias Raymond and freshmen Willi Wascher and Kannon Smith as candidates to replace him.
- USC’s line allowed 1.15 sacks per game last season, 14th nationally, while using seven starting combinations.
- USC is +1100 to win the Big Ten, a price that implies about 8 percent.
LOS ANGELES – USC lost projected Week 1 starting center Kilian O’Connor for the season to a non-contact knee injury suffered in practice Wednesday, coach Lincoln Riley said Thursday. O’Connor had surgery Thursday morning.
From Walk-On To USC’s Starting Line Caller
O’Connor arrived at USC as a walk-on in the 2022 class, earned a scholarship before last season and started seven games in 2025. Riley described the injury as a freak one and called O’Connor one of the “heartbeats of this program”.
The Center’s Job Is Protection, Not Production
A center does not show up in a box score. He identifies the front before the snap, sets the protection, calls the slide and gets the ball back clean and on time. That work is why an interior injury reads differently from a skill-position injury, and why it lands hardest in the first weeks of a season, when a new starter is learning the cadence of the four linemen around him.
USC’s line has a number behind its confidence. It allowed 1.15 sacks per game in 2025, 14th nationally among more than 130 teams, and it produced that figure while shuffling through seven different starting combinations. A unit that held up through that much churn has backups who have taken meaningful snaps.
Three Names For One Job
Riley put Raymond forward as the experienced option, with Wascher, a redshirt freshman, and Smith, a true freshman, also in the mix. Moving Raymond inside answers the experience question at center but opens the guard spot he vacates. Wascher and Smith were both three-star recruits, a tier below the four- and five-star prospects.
“We’re fortunate to have enough depth on the O-line that we’ve been working on and obviously be able to continue to push forward,” Riley said.
Where USC Sits On The Big Ten Board
USC is +1100 to win the Big Ten, a price that implies about 8 percent, and +3300 to win the national title, a number that implies about 3 percent. That leaves the Trojans a full tier behind the league’s top three and one rung ahead of Michigan.
| Big Ten champion | Odds |
|---|---|
| Ohio State | +190 |
| Indiana | +250 |
| Oregon | +275 |
| USC | +1100 |
| Michigan | +1300 |
Those numbers are payouts, not forecasts. A +1100 ticket pays what it pays; whether USC’s real chance of winning the league beats the 8 percent that price implies is the bet. The Trojans already sat behind Ohio State, Indiana and Oregon in the college football futures market before this week.
One interior lineman does not rewrite a conference number, and USC returns the four other projected starters up front. The sharper reading is a continuity problem in August, one that shows up first in game-level markets and college football team totals rather than in a title price.
No. 14 Trojans Open Aug. 29 Against San Jose State
USC is No. 14 in the preseason US LBM Coaches Poll, seven spots better than where the same poll left the Trojans at the end of last season. The coaches still left USC outside their projected playoff field. The Trojans open Aug. 29 against San Jose State in Week 0, 24 days after the injury and the opening date on the college football props calendar.
Riley said he would not be surprised if O’Connor is still voted a team captain.
