LOS ANGELES — The seeds of the exodus were first planted in mid-November, the week before UCLA limped into the Coliseum to pummel USC, both programs bruised and disappointed and on the doorstep of a major overhaul.
Rumors – ultimately unfounded, but rumors nonetheless – around Bruins head coach Chip Kelly’s job status reached a fever pitch in the lead-up to the crosstown rivalry, coming off a flat loss to Arizona State. So freshman safety Kamari Ramsey and father Stacy sat down for a conversation that week, discussing the future. Stacy played football at Kennedy High and was wise enough to read writing on the wall, scrawled in invisible ink: Change was coming at UCLA, and it might well center not on Kelly but the new defensive coordinator who had been the high point of UCLA’s season.
“Kamari, the way your defense has been performing – this coach, a lot of people going to be coming after him,” Stacy recalled telling his son that week. “You do realize that, right?”
And still, it was somewhat of a shock a couple of weeks later for the Ramseys to find that D’Anton Lynn, the young architect of UCLA’s best defense in decades, had not only jumped ship but jumped ship straight across town – to a USC defense the Bruins had just pulverized. Dad, is this real? Ramsey texted his father when the Lynn news broke.
And elsewhere, Lynn’s departure was “devastating” for cornerback John Humphrey, as mother Bridget put it. Both defensive backs had found comfort at UCLA specifically because of Lynn, Ramsey as an up-and-coming safety with NFL dreams, Humphrey a veteran who just wanted some stability after playing for three coordinators in four years.
So in the span of a few hours on Dec. 21, a couple of weeks after hitting the transfer portal, Ramsey and Humphrey committed to USC in a loosely connected effort. It represented the next step in USC’s overhaul of the secondary, hiring Houston defensive coordinator Doug Belk to coach their DBs just a few days prior, now suddenly inheriting two starters from a lockdown UCLA group.
It represented, too, an extreme trust in their coordinator, an uprooting that Humphrey’s father Lionel called the “Lynn effect.”
“He was like, ‘I believe in him,’” Stacy recalled his son saying, after news broke that Lynn was leaving for USC.
“At that point,” Stacy continued, “I think he was like, ‘Well, I’m maybe thinking about following him over there to USC.’”
Before he became a cornerstone in two Lynn defensive rebuilds, Kamari Ramsey was a painfully shy child, rarely one to express his needs or desires to those with whom he wasn’t close.
He was a picky eater, sister Staci recalled. But if the Ramseys were over at someone’s house and having something unfamiliar for dinner, young Kamari would be reluctant to verbalize an alternate request – so sister Staci, five years his elder, would have to tell them that her little brother isn’t going to eat it. On the flip side of the same coin, if Ramsey was offered something he did want, Staci would still have to speak for him.
“Like, ‘Yes, he would like one,’” Staci recalled.
In maturing, the shyness has shed and morphed into a sort of poker face, a mellow lack of expressiveness. Her brother is hard to read, Stacy said. Rarely too high, rarely too low. It’s the same demeanor Lynn has carried since he played ball himself, and Ramsey’s trust in him extended past football, past a hand-in-glove fit in Lynn’s scheme brought from a role as safeties coach of the Ravens.
“Kamari really liked that he had a coach that could understand him, in that sense,” Staci said.
And Lynn trusted Ramsey, too, as just a 19-year-old redshirt freshman who played a major role for UCLA. Ramsey allowed just 11 catches in 23 attempts when targeted in pass coverage, according to Pro Football Focus, also plenty adept in run coverage. Lynn believed in Ramsey, Stacy said – and so Ramsey believed in him.
So, too, did Humphrey, a corner who had endured a turbulent career at UCLA. Humphrey’s first two seasons were marred by COVID, little playing time and a less-than-perfect relationship with coordinator Jerry Azzinaro, his parents said. And several times, he had seriously considered transferring – only for Kelly to “talk John down,” as father Lionel put it.
Kelly couldn’t talk Humphrey back again after Lynn left, though. Humphrey didn’t want to spend his final year on a team that would be rebuilding again, mother Bridget Goudeau said – and once he found out Ramsey had hit the portal, Goudeau said, it sealed the deal for Humphrey, too.
Depth in USC’s room was a definite point of concern, particularly as cornerback Domani Jackson transferred to Alabama and mainstay safety Calen Bullock declared for the NFL draft. But Lynn can plug in Ramsey and Humphrey as Day One starters entering the Big Ten, depending on how they fare in spring practice. And after Lynn earned respect at UCLA within a few short months, enhancing the impact of a largely consistent returning group in his first year as a collegiate coordinator, he’s continued to draw talent that wants to be a part of his rebuild at USC.
“Imagine, now, this is going to be his second year on this level,” Ramsey’s father Stacy said, explaining their thought process in following Lynn. “He excelled in his first year. So it’s going to be kinda scary what he’s going to be able to do.”