Lincoln Riley breaks down USC's plan at running back after losing Travis Dye

USC suffered a major blow on Friday night when starting running back Travis Dye went down against Colorado. The team has already announced he’ll be out for the remainder of the Trojan’s season after being placed in an air cast and being carted off the field during the 55-17 win over the Buffaloes. As the team finds a way to cope with the loss of their teammate, Lincoln Riley is now faced with the difficult task of finding a way to fill in without him.

Riley shared his thoughts on how USC’s run game will move forward during ‘Trojans Live‘ on Monday. As of now, the plan is to promote Austin Jones, the senior transfer from Stanford, as their RB1 and feature him because of his experience and his ability within their offense.

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“It’ll certainly be interesting. I mean Austin’s definitely option one right now. I don’t think there’s any denying that,” said Riley. “He came in and played well. We felt like those guys were 1A and 1B really throughout the season. And he’s been tremendous. To have a guy that we can turn to there that has his experience, playmaking ability, knowledge, and some experience in the offense? (It) makes a big difference.”

Dye was the team’s leading rusher this season with 884 yards and nine touchdowns overall on the ground. However, Jones has been a quality option behind him with 334 yards and three touchdowns of his own. Since the USC backs get featured in the passing game as well, he’s been serviceable in that aspect too with 12 catches for 134 yards and a touchdown.

Riley did elude to the option that freshman Raleek Brown and redshirt junior Darwin Barlow will also be seeing more snaps. To replace a highlighted player like Dye, it’s going to take an effort by committee. Thankfully for USC, Riley believes he has the players to do it and is about to give them all the workload they can handle.

“We’re certainly going to use Raleek and Darwin. There’s no question about that,” said Riley. “Those guys did some really nice things the other night. It was good to see them both get a lot of carries. And be able to go run with kind of a full offense with them…(I) thought they both handled it well.”

“It’s three different guys. They’re three very different skill sets, which sometimes can be tough on a defense. We’ll pump the reps into all three of them. (We’ll) have them all ready, and I would plan on using all three.”

Replacing Dye this late in the game is anything but ideal. That’s especially true since USC is fighting for the Pac-12 and is back knocking on the door for the CFP. If they want to stay in those races, they can’t show any signs of a drop-off with Dye absent. Riley will need Jones, Brown, and Barlow to be at their best as USC wraps up its regular season and fights for the postseason starting this weekend at UCLA.