USC Guard Khaliel Rodgers Likely to Miss Season Opener vs. Fresno State

The Trojans’ new-look offensive line won’t be 100 percent ready to go next Saturday in the season opener against Fresno State.

Redshirt freshman right guard Khaliel Rodgers had been expected to start for USC, but after a going down on Monday, the outlook for him returning in time to start the Steve Sarkisian era seems bleak.

Gary Klein of the new USC Now blog at the LA Times is reporting that the timetable may even make Rodgers questionable for Stanford in Week 2.

"USC offensive lineman Khaliel Rodgers suffered a knee sprain and could be sidelined for two weeks. Rodgers was injured Monday night during a scrimmage at the Coliseum."

Next in line at right guard for USC is last year’s starter Aundrey Walker, along with true freshman big man Damien Mama.

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Walker has plenty of experience, starting 18 games over the course of the last two seasons.

Ten of those starts have come at right guard in 2013, after losing out on the left tackle job to Chad Wheeler.

As for the true freshman Mama, he’s a talented yet unproven commodity along the offensive line. Though to be fair, that could be said for a lot of the inexperienced players including Khaliel Rodgers himself.

Rodgers entered the spring as a candidate to replace Marcus Martin at center, but ultimately moved to guard when it was decided that Max Tuerk would take over inside.

A product of East Christian Academy in Elkton, Md., Rodgers redshirted last season along with high school teammate Kenny Bigelow, and now finds himself on the same training table yet again, as Bigelow is out for the year with a ligament tear in his knee.

USC opens the season against Fresno State next Saturday at the Coliseum, followed by the Pac-12 road opener at Stanford on September 6th.

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