USC heads to Michigan with ‘healthy respect’ for reigning champs – and QB Alex Orji

LOS ANGELES — Come Saturday, the man taking center stage at the Big House presents a riddle. Quite a few of them, actually. He is a 6-foot-3, 235-pound walking paradox who popped up on the “Freaks List” compiled by The Athletic’s Bruce Feldman, a quarterback unlike anyone this USC defense has seen, a quarterback unlike anyone most anyone has seen.

He is also a relative national unknown, with tantalizing athleticism but almost no tape on his throwing arm, and USC’s Jamil Muhammad had to double-check his name Wednesday.

“We’re excited to play against somebody that’s elusive like – Alex, I believe he’s named?” said Muhammad, a defensive end. “Yeah. We’re excited to to play somebody that’s as elusive as him.”

Alex-I-believe-he’s-named would be Alex Orji, the sudden man of the hour in college football, a junior quarterback who has played 54 snaps of college football with the Wolverines and dropped back to pass exactly 10 of those times. He was a fairly quiet three-star recruit out of Texas, a kid who completed less than 50% of his passes during his senior year of high school, and yet was so respected as an athlete that he had drawn USC head coach Lincoln Riley’s attention back when the quarterback guru was at Oklahoma.

Orji is now Michigan’s starting quarterback, dubbed by head coach Sherrone Moore on Monday in a pivot from incumbent Davis Warren. And he is a calamity for game-planning purposes come Saturday, USC’s defense suddenly tasked with figuring out how to anticipate the balance of an entirely new midseason offense designed around a scrambling quarterback who could reasonably throw the football anywhere between 30 times and five times.

“I mean, he’s, you don’t play quarterback at this level without being able to throw the ball some,” Riley said Tuesday. “To sit there and think if he plays the entire game that they’re going to – run it 70 times and throw it one time, or something like that, I don’t think that’s going to be the case.”

The wild thing: that’s still not a remarkable over-exaggeration. Orji has thrown the ball seven times, for a total of 20 yards, in his college career. He has run the ball 31 times, his dual-threat – well, maybe single-threat – ability his best asset, and a sputtering Michigan offense has found its most success during a 2-1 start in the ground game (5.2 yards per carry).

And yet, there is the possibility he drops back, more than he’s ever shown on tape. As Lynn pointed out, all the film that exists from Orji’s time at Michigan has come as part of a specialty designed package, where Orji has been inserted for plays here and there and run a heavy run-pass-option scheme. The No. 18 Wolverines could rely on that package, or throw it into a newly designed offense with a variety of wrinkles at No. 11 USC (2-0); Moore indicated a couple of weeks ago that Orji would pass more this season.

It’s a fascinating test for a USC defense that has thus far passed with straight A’s under new coordinator D’Anton Lynn. Muhammad asserted that the unit was “much better” with pre-snap communication in 2024, a facet that will be key in dissecting Michigan’s attack on Saturday. But Muhammad and linebacker Easton Mascarenas-Arnold agreed that USC’s defensive looks and habits shouldn’t change based on the simple run-pass calamity presented by Orji.

“I don’t think we’re going to change any scheme,” Mascarenas-Arnold said. “Maybe mindset. Just understanding that – if he doesn’t like something, he has the ability to take off and run, and maybe make an explosive play.”

The buzzards have swirled around Michigan in the season’s early weeks, picking away at the carcass left behind by former coach Jim Harbaugh’s move to the NFL. But Muhammad agreed Wednesday, emphatically, with Riley’s assessment of not underestimating the reigning national champions.

They have a coach, in Moore, who knows how to win, as Muhammad emphasized. They have a host of defensive returners with title experience. And they have a quarterback, now, who presents a myriad of possibilities to account for.

“I think you just always gotta have a healthy respect for any opponent, but I mean, especially somebody who just came off of a national championship,” Muhammad said, “whether they lost everybody, or whether they’re having their quote-unquote struggles scoring, or whether they suck, or whatever people say.”

“Like, at the end of the day,” he continued, “last time I checked – we didn’t win a national championship. They did.”