Miller Moss, long USC’s backup QB, is ready for his day in the sun

LOS ANGELES — There is no better way, it seems, to describe how Miller Moss is moving differently around USC practice fields these days than that arcane projection of aura.

“You can just tell by the swagger, man,” longtime teammate Jaylin Smith beams, with that 3,000-watt smile of his. “You can just tell how he walks.”

The swagger, man. It’s always been Miller, USC edge Jamil Muhammad affirms. It feels a strange – and goofy – explanation to bestow on a decidedly white kid from an affluent Los Angeles background, and yet it’s a constant, flying from the mouths of teammates and friends and coaches alike.

And it feels strange, perhaps, because the general public has had little chance to see an ounce of such swagger that drips from Moss’ self-assured smirk. For years, he’s been enveloped in Caleb Williams’ shadow in the Trojans’ quarterback room, their Howard Jones Field on campus the only stage for a once-prized recruit, head coach Lincoln Riley even lamenting that he’d “liked to have been able to play him a little bit more here in the last couple of years.”

But Moss, longtime quarterback trainer Steve Clarkson said, understood Williams is generational. So he stayed. He developed, clay molded quietly by Riley and fellow QB guru Kliff Kingsbury. And three years later, Moss’ story has become a rarity in modern collegiate football, where the transfer portal chews up and spits out young quarterbacks in drama fit for reality television. A kid who has simply remained.

“Miller actually laid down the perfect playbook,” Clarkson said, “for how you maneuver the system.”

He’s the guy, now, at USC. Teammates know it. Fans know it. And Moss knows it, tabbed officially as the starter for the Trojans’ Holiday Bowl matchup with Louisville on Wednesday in San Diego, finally afforded a shot to chase a dream that’s built since high school.

The question is how long he’ll be that guy. Riley has been clear that USC may look to target as many as two quarterbacks in the transfer portal, following Malachi Nelson’s departure; Kansas State quarterback Will Howard may be on the way. It’d force Moss into another war for control of Riley’s offense, one he’s been fighting from the minute he stepped onto USC’s campus.

And it’s in his response, there, where that aura reveals itself, raw and radiant. Purely unbothered. Flashing that smirk, not one of youthful arrogance but a vet’s confidence.

“Coach Riley’s been very candid and open with me,” Moss said earlier in December, asked about his approach to another potential quarterback battle.

“I mean, been competing my whole life,” he continued, smiling. “So – let’s go.”

‘If you ask him, there was no Plan B’

Moss grew up a young pianist. Multitalented. His young sister is a professional ballet dancer; he is the son of architect Eric Owen Moss, and football was simply an option for him.

And yet, he was the one pushing his parents to take him to practice. To drop him off to train with Clarkson, a well-known quarterback guru in Southern California. He grew up playing with kids in the youth Los Angeles scene that “had an edge to them,” as Clarkson put it. Kids who saw football as their only way out. Maybe it gave Moss – a golden-haired boy with wavy curls – a bit of an edge, too.

When he transferred to Alemany from Loyola his sophomore year of high school, he wanted to “put a stamp” on the program, as high school coach Casey Clausen put it. He wanted to be known. He went one level deeper, at practices, in his thought process of competing at his position, beyond Southern California. What about this quarterback in Florida? What about this one in Kentucky? Pennsylvania? 

He put his name on the map as a junior, generating widespread recruiting buzz as he lead Alemany to a 10-3 season. In a playoff game against Paraclete, he led a three-touchdown comeback that Smith – a teammate since Alemany – still talks about with starry eyes.

“It was just something that I’ve never seen Miller do,” Smith said. “Dialed in, and was just so locked in. I’ve never seen it.”

He grew up a USC fan, mother Emily Kovner Moss a professor at USC’s School of Architecture while she was pregnant with him. And when he eventually committed to USC, Clarkson remembered, the program – then run by Clay Helton – made it clear they wanted to bring in two quarterbacks. They offered Miami quarterback Jake Garcia. Moss didn’t care.

“For him, it’s just, this was part of his plan,” Clarkson said, reflecting on Moss sticking with USC. “And if you ask him, there was no Plan B. It was Plan A or Plan A. That’s it.”

He stuck to Plan A, through the doldrums of 2021. Through Riley bringing in Williams, building trust as Riley was “transparent with Miller,” Kovner Moss said. And Moss, too, has built a life for himself bigger than football at USC; a member of the school’s Sigma Chi fraternity, sociable with athletes and non-athletes alike, determined above all else to graduate with a degree from USC above all.

In recent weeks, with the transfer portal wreaking havoc on USC’s roster, Riley made it clear he’s attempting to build a roster of players that are “dying to be USC Trojans.” And Moss, in that vein, is a sergeant who feels real loyalty; who has stuck it out through three years with 59 pass attempts to show for it, who responded with that same smirk when asked if he’d plan to stay and compete for the starting job in the spring even if USC brought in another quarterback.

“We play a difficult sport, I play a difficult position, it’s hard to win football games at this level – it has to be earned,” Moss said.

“And if you turn and run or whatever it is at the first sign of adversity, you’re never going to grow as a football player or as a human being as a whole.”

‘I’ve felt more like myself than I ever have’

Clarkson’s son, Pierce, who grew up thick with Moss, is now a freshman quarterback at Louisville. It gives Clarkson a unique perspective heading down to San Diego, two of his pupils on opposite sides of what looks like a lopsided Holiday Bowl on paper – Caleb Williams unlikely to play for USC.

Underestimate Moss, Clarkson feels, at your own risk.

“Just speaking with people at Louisville,” Clarkson said, “they’re not taking this game lightly at all.”

This is not the story of a program scrambling to hand the reins to a doe-eyed backup. This is a quarterback who’s prepared religiously for years, who knows Riley’s offense as well as anyone, stepping into a situation where most everyone who speaks of him around USC has unwavering faith.

“I think if anything,” Moss said, “I’ve felt more like myself than I ever have.”

There’s that swagger. Her son, Kovner Moss said, has always known himself well. It’s translated to football – he knows his exact strengths, Clarkson said, and never tries to be someone he isn’t.

He’s mobile, but doesn’t maneuver with the same backyard-scramble intangibles Williams has shown for two years; Moss has simply seen most every front or coverage a collegiate quarterback could see, and will dissect defenses mentally like a Drew Brees, Clarkson said.