Chasen Johnson injury update: Lincoln Riley reveals brutal diagnosis for USC CB

USC will be without a key player in the secondary for the rest of the season, coach Lincoln Riley announced on Tuesday. Sophomore cornerback Chasen Johnson has been lost due to a knee injury.

Johnson had recorded one tackle through USC’s first three games, but he was a critical piece on the depth chart. He’ll be missed.

“Yeah, Chasen has an injury, he’ll end up missing the rest of the year,” Riley said. “So really disappointed for that. Chasen had a knee injury.”

Chasen Johnson had transferred to USC this offseason, looking to play a key part in the secondary. He had worked himself into that kind of a role in the first three games, seeing a good number of snaps.

Prior to that, Johnson saw action in 12 games with four starts as a true freshman at UCF. He finished his season with 18 tackles and two pass breakups.

Before enrolling at UCF, Chasen Johnson was a three-star prospect, rated as the No. 1,103 overall player in the Rivals Industry Rankings for the class of 2024. He was ranked as the No. 118 cornerback in the class and the No. 147 overall player in the state of Florida, hailing from Sanford (FL) Seminole.

Joel Klatt calls USC a ‘scary’ team

Chasen Johnson injury aside, there was a sense that USC and Lincoln Riley would just meander through the 2025 season and be average to above-average. That seems to have changed through three weeks, per Fox Sports’ Joel Klatt.

Led by quarterback Jayden Maiava, the offense is firing off on all cylinders right now. Not only that, the defense seems improved through three games, albeit not against Big Ten competition.

Still, Klatt likened this Riley USC team to his Oklahoma days. They’re scary right now as they appeared in the AP Poll Top 25 Sunday.

“I feel like I was trying to talk to you into this last week, and I feel like you’ve come around on kind of the blueprint that Lincoln Riley used to be successful at Oklahoma,” Klatt said on The Herd. “And I feel like USC is following more of that blueprint. This year, they’ve run it a lot better, even though Jayden Maiava, as you have said, has been terrific.

“I think it’s one of the more underrated teams in the country. Personally, right now, I think that their game this weekend against Michigan State is a perfect opportunity to beat what I think is a decent team, and then they’re going to have a monster game against Illinois, which is going to be kind of a coming out party for Maiava and this entire program as a re-emergence as a power.” 

On3’s Nick Kosko also contributed to this report.