Austin Jones got texts from old teammates this week. Maybe a little bit of trash talk as his new team, the 10th-ranked USC Trojans, prepare to battle his old team, the Stanford Cardinal.

USC travels to Stanford on Saturday for a primetime game and an early-season conference clash. Jones transferred from Stanford this offseason to be part of Lincoln Riley’s offensive renaissance in Los Angeles. Getting to go against his old teammates so soon after provides for quite the gameday storyline.

Except Jones isn’t into all that.

“I heard from them. They’ve been texting me and stuff,” he said of his old Stanford teammates. “I don’t really do the back and forth. I gave them all the same response: ‘see you this weekend.'”

For Jones, he has a singular focus on USC.

“It’s just another game,” he told reporters when he met with the media mid-week. “It’ll be fun playing against my old teammates but at the end of the day, we just want to go 1-0 each week.”

Fellow USC runner Travis Dye said Jones is a little more antsy this week as he prepares to face his old team. “He wants to get after it,” Dye said. But Jones also knows the attention has to be on them and what they can do to get better every week.

That’s the experience talking. The veteran presence.

Jones was an attractive add from the transfer portal for Riley because of it.

“You turn on the tape and we thought he was a very versatile player,” Riley said of Jones. “We thought he did a good job … in the throwing game last year. We thought he did a good job in pass protection. We thought in the opportunities he had to run the ball he had good vision, explosion, ran hard. Again, I think just the combination of all that and then bringing some experience and game reps to the backfield, that was important. It made it a no-brainer for us.”

Jones was very effective in his USC debut. He had four carries for 48 yards and two touchdowns — including a 28-yard score — as well as a catch for 21 yards.

He’ll look for more of the same against the Cardinal. The two sides square off at 4:30 p.m. PT Saturday on ABC.