Class of 2025 five-star quarterback Julian Lewis, who has been committed to the USC Trojans for the better part of a year, along with four-star offensive lineman and fellow Trojan 2025 commit, Carde Smith, were both seen in Boulder to take in Colorado’s game versus Cincinnati last weekend.
Now with an additional proposed trip to Bloomington and head coach Curt Cignetti for Indiana’s contest against Michigan also tentatively on the books, is Lewis waffling on being a Trojan?
Furthermore, is USC objectively the best path for his future? We dive deeper.
The Case For Julian Lewis And The USC Trojans
In addition to the university’s tightly knit alumni network, particularly for athletes venturing to enhance their brands, along with USC’s location at the epicenter of one of the world’s greatest media markets, the justification can be spelled with two words…Lincoln Riley.
For all his potential shortcomings as a program builder, there’s no denying Riley’s ability to produce quarterbacks that go on to the NFL.
Five of the NFL’s 32 starting quarterbacks, representing a staggering 16% of the league’s starters, are Riley disciples, including Baker Mayfield, Kyler Murray, Jalen Hurts, Spencer Rattler (who started while Derek Carr was injured), and Caleb Williams. Three of those signal callers (Mayfield, Murray, and Williams) went on to win the Heisman Trophy with Hurts finishing as runner-up.
If Lewis wants a pedigreed path to the NFL and an inside track to Heisman Trophy contention, then being under the tutelage of quarterback whisperer Riley seems to be a logically obvious choice.
The Case Against USC
While Julian Lewis will have to contend with the possibility of competing with Miller Moss and Jayden Maiava next year, with Maiava possibly staying with the Trojans in 2026, this leaves the very real possibility of not getting on the field with the Cardinal and Gold until 2027.
At programs like Colorado and Indiana, Lewis would almost certainly play sooner, if not next year as a true freshman starter.
But beyond the reps, the Lewis family must ask if the end goal is simply to make the NFL or become a superstar in the league. For if the answer is the latter, heading away from the Trojans makes a lot of sense.
Why? While Riley has produced five starting quarterbacks, none of them are superstars (in fairness, Caleb Williams is just at the inception of his journey), and the best pro of the bunch, Hurts, was truly competitively wired by Nick Saban and Alabama before Riley inherited him as a rather mature prospect.
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If you look at the composition of the true quarterback superstars in the NFL over the past decade, the MVP and All-Pro caliber players, none of them went to blue-blood schools.
The likes of Patrick Mahomes, Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen, Aaron Rodgers, Matt Ryan, and Cam Newton all took non-traditional football schools and converted them into contenders.
By contrast, the blue-blood quarterbacks like Matt Leinart, John David Booty, Mark Sanchez, Vince Young, Colt McCoy, Tim Tebow, AJ McCarron, Mac Jones, Bryce Young, Stetson Bennett, and even Trevor Lawrence – none of them truly panned out as pros.
The reason is that going to a blue-blood program offers a quarterback advantages at every position on the field and that is actually a detriment to development. Conversely, elevating a program with average to below-average players relative to your competition is perhaps the best preparation for the speed, complexity, and precision of the NFL game.
The best education Lewis can get is elevating Colorado to the college football playoff or taking Indiana into battles with the likes of Ohio State, Michigan, Oregon, and Penn State.
Either way, as the saying goes, where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire. It will be fascinating to see how Julian Lewis’ National Letter of Intent Day plays out over the next month.