USC Football surprisingly loses 2023 lineman commit to UCLA flip

USC Football 2023 DL commit Grant Buckey is a USC Football 2023 DL commit no more. He has flipped his commitment to UCLA on Thursday. It is perplexing as to why he did this, as USC is an exponentially better program than UCLA. SC went 11-1 this season. UCLA went 9-3, with a loss to USC in their own Rose Bowl.

Buckey is a three-star DL prospect (all recruiting ratings and rankings in article are as of 247Sports), and is ranked as the No. 62 defensive lineman in the country. The de-commitment is a little surprising because it seemed like Buckey, who hails from Liberty High School (Bakersfield, CA), was all-in on SC when he dropped a Grant Buckey merchandise line that had USC themed-products in July.

Buckey is listed as the No. 39 player in the state of California, and has the right size for the Power 5 level. He's 6-5, 265 pounds, and had offers from two blueblood football programs in USC and Michigan.

Something that stands out in Buckey's game is that he plays with a lot of aggression off the edge, especially for someone of his size, yet he still has the body control to center himself and swallow up the QB or RB in the backfield.

Rivals recruiting director Adam Gorney said it best: "He can use his speed to the edge" and "he kind of comes off the edge with a little bit of reckless abandon, but then quickly kind of centers himself to make the tackle."

USC Football still has a good 2023 recruiting class, even without DL Grant Buckey.

USC Football has the No. 14 recruiting class in the nation for 2023, even with the loss of Grant Buckey. It's not a great class, but it's certainly a good one. Again, it's important not to judge the class too early due to the transfer portal being available to use all the way up through spring ball and even plenty of time after that.

The overall recruiting class will not be finalized until after spring ball when the dealine to transfer and play in 2023 comes along. Besides, Early Signing period doesn't even start until December 21st.

Losing Buckey isn't ideal, but he's not one of the blue chip players in this Trojan class. With the Bruins recruiting as poorly as they are again this year (59th class in the country), one would hope they would finally be able to get a USC player to flip to their school.