247Sports pegs USC as a 'buy now' team heading into the 2022 season

We don’t have win totals yet from Vegas, but we do have plenty of preseason “way-too-early” polls, projections, and rankings. Most places seem to be at a consensus on USC’s upcoming season: be in wait-and-see mode, but it’s perfectly reasonable to be pretty optimistic about what’s coming.

Lincoln Riley was the best addition any team made this offseason. And he brought the best quarterback who entered the transfer portal, Caleb Williams, with him to Los Angeles. A city and a school known for bright lights and big stars added two of the biggest. Riley expects to win at USC and win early.

He has completely remade the roster. The expectation is that he’ll continue to do so after spring ball ends as Riley looks to thread the needle and construct the best possible group for short- and long-term success. Despite a 4-8 record a season ago and questions about a few key spots on the depth chart, the Trojans are firmly a “buy now” kind of team.

247Sports recently did an exercise in evaluating the buy-or-sell options heading into next season from a stock-market perspective. Their take on USC? Buy.

Here’s what 247’s Brad Crawford wrote on the Trojans:

You would be hard-pressed to find a program that made more positive offseason noise than USC after landing Lincoln Riley—and a few months later—5-star transfer quarterback Caleb Williams in what amounts to a package deal. And when you completely overhaul a roster the way Riley has done since his arrival through the transfer portal, your program can go from just outside the top 25 to elite pretty quick in a winnable Pac-12. Sticking the favorite label on USC in the conference at this time might be a bit too optimistic given what Utah has returning, but those inside Riley’s program expect to be good—fast. USC is a buy.