Lincoln Riley reveals interesting method on scouting transfer Tyrone Taleni

The NCAA Transfer Portal has changed the way that college football coaches recruit – there’s no question about it. With many top-tier players now entering and exiting the portal each and every day, coaches are having to consistently check the system to see who is coming and going.

That’s certainly been the case for new USC head coach Lincoln Riley, who brought in a handful of talented players from the transfer portal to add to his Trojans’ roster. Among the guys he brought in was Tyrone Taleni – a defensive tackle from Kansas State.

While Taleni – a former On3 Consensus three-star recruit out of the Class of 2018 – didn’t see much action at K-State as he recorded just five total tackles over two seasons, Riley said that the defender is the type of player that USC can really use.

Meeting with the media over the weekend, Riley was asked how he scouted Taleni with the defensive tackle not having much game film from K-State.

“Well, we had seen him in the league there,” Riley said of Taleni. “It was a deal where you look at it and the total number of snaps and there wasn’t a lot there, then when you started to research him – the worker, kind of his journey in football – it kind of made sense. But the snaps he did play, we saw some things that we thought were intriguing, especially with our style on the defensive line. … Our style’s a bit different than K-State’s.

“We got around the kid, kind of learned about some of the circumstances there. … There’s always a lot to the story with these transfers – you’ve gotta try to kind of weed through it pretty quickly. The more we found out about him, we were confident in the kind of kid we were bringing in here, we were confident in the scheme would fit the kind of player that he is and we think that he can become.”

A native of Apia, Samoa, Taleni will be a senior with the Trojans in 2022.