USC football has disappointing amount of players invited to NFL Combine

USC football just had Tony Boselli inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and there is now officially no school with more Pro Football Hall of Famers than SC.

The NFL development tradition is about as rich as it gets at SC. This year, however, the numbers for the combine are rather disappointing. NFL Scouting Combine invitations were sent out last week, and only FIVE Trojans got one.

That means the Trojans are tied for 18th in the country in combine invites in 2022. Absolutely unacceptable.

Keaontay Ingram, Drake Jackson, Drake London, Chris Steele, and Isaac Taylor-Stuart received invites, but that was it.

USC football can't let this happen again.

USC football is second all-time with 517 NFL Draft picks. They are only three behind Notre Dame. With ND only having five combine selections this year, it goes to show that they had an off year in terms of NFL development.

Therefore, we should be going ahead and reclaiming our lead that we lost recently. Instead, we very well may still be in second-place when the draft is over this year.

On the bright side, Oklahoma was tied for the second-most invitations (11), proving that new USC Head Coach Lincoln Riley clearly knows how to develop. It appears that this down time for SC will likely not continue. This year, we saw regression from three defensive backs who were expected to be at least decent NFL prospects this year (Isaiah Pola-Mao, Taylor-Stuart, and Steele).

We also saw Jackson not reach his potential. We developed Ingram and London very nicely, but we need a more well-rounded effort from the coaching staff to be more well-rounded and complete in our player development.

Thank goodness for Riley, as blunders like these are not likely to continue happening moving forward.