After Miller Moss commits, USC's 2021 football recruiting class gets bumped up to No. 4 in the country
USC football appears to be back, at least from a recruiting standpoint.
The Trojans picked up another huge 2021 commit this week in Miller Moss, a 4-star QB at Alemany and one of the most sought-after quarterbacks in the country. Moss committed to USC on June 1.
The mid-April additions of DB Anthony Beavers Jr. (Narbonne), OT Maximus Gibbs (St. John Bosco), and ATH Calen Bullock (Muir) pushed what was already an excellent recruiting class into 247Sports' top five.
The Trojans continued bolstering the class in May with OT Saia Mapakaitolo (Alemany) and DE Colin Mobley of Maryland powerhouse DeMatha Catholic. But landing Moss – their second top-five pro-style QB in the class of 2021 – was enough to move them ahead of North Carolina and into the fourth spot in 247Sports' rankings.
Jake Garcia is the other top-five pro-style QB committed to USC. He committed in September after Mater Dei's Bryce Young flipped his commitment to Alabama. As it currently stands, this sets up an eye-popping position rivalry for the long haul.
Regardless of the positional overlap, there are two main reasons that every big recruiting addition is significant for USC. The first is that their 2020 recruiting class fell outside of the top-50 in the country for the first time in generations after a couple of tumultuous seasons.
The second is that Moss represents another local prospect choosing USC over dozens of other Power-5 schools including elites like LSU and Alabama. The Trojans' have never struggled to recruit the highest echelon of prospects in their own backyard as much as they have over the past few years.
Adding Moss, Garcia, and a dozen other highly-ranked prospects is already something to celebrate simply because there is a lot of talent to be excited about. But the fact that it's signaling an end to a brief, uncharacteristic period of surprising inability to secure prospects in "USC territory" is also a success that cannot be overstated.
