USC football: Four-star WR Kyle Ford cleared to return from knee injury

Four-star wide receiver Kyle Ford tweeted news on Tuesday that he has cleared to return from the knee injury which ended his senior season in high school.

USC football wide receiver corps was woefully thin in Spring Camp, but the Trojans got some very welcome news on Tuesday which should help greatly in the fall.

Four-star wide receiver and incoming fall enrollee Kyle Ford tweeted on Tuesday that he has been “CLEARED.”

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Ford suffered a knee injury five games into his senior season at Orange Lutheran last fall. That injury threatened to force a redshirt season, but he has now come one step closer to avoiding a sit-out year.

Before his injury, Ford was one of the most exciting recruits on the market. He put up 456 yards and seven touchdowns in the opening month of the high school season. Before that, he starred in the offseason camp circuit, rising up recruiting rankings in that process.

Having amassed 1,468 yards and 13 touchdowns as a junior in 2017, he ranked No. 128 nationally coming out of that season. By the start of his senior campaign, he was in the Top 30.

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Standing 6-foot-2, 212 pounds, Ford is a competitive athlete willing to battle for the ball. And he has the size, strength and ability to win those battles more often than not.

Greg Biggins of 247Sports compared him to JuJu Smith-Schuster, which should be just about all USC fans need to hear to get very excited about Ford’s prospects in cardinal and gold.

After USC had several receivers transfer and lost Bru McCoy and Puka Nacua in the 2019 recruiting class, the importance of getting Ford back on the field early grew exponentially.

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He indicated at the All-American Bowl in January that he would be healthy by the time the season came around, but skepticism was still warranted. Many players have come to USC with high school injury concerns and needed quite awhile before they were cleared.

The fact that Ford has been cleared in some capacity by the end of April is a very good sign that he may be able to participate fully in Fall Camp.

The Trojans will need him to. They practiced in Spring Camp with no more than five scholarship receivers on any given day.

In the fall, USC will be bolstered by Ford, along with four-star two-sport star Drake London and three-star prospect Munir McCLain. Of those three, Ford appears to be the most capable of making an early splash, in much the same way Smith-Schuster did.