When USC Trojans hired Gary Patterson, everybody in SoCal knew they were getting a total revamp of the scheme, formation, and even how the defense move. EDGE and Defensive End are no exception. The word is Legendary Patterson is , moving away from D’Anton Lynn’s “play it safe” style. Instead of asking his best athletes to drop back into coverage, he’s letting them loose to do what they do best: hunt the quarterback.

On February 20th, USC Trojans DC hopped onto the podium during their 2026 Media Day spring and dropped a potential blue-print top 5 sacks production for the upcoming season:

“For example, you know, I think we have a very high level of defensive ends, rush guys. We dropped them a lot last year, so it’s like Ed Orgeron told Dave Aranda the year they won the national championship.

The guy that played for LSU that was rushing in is now with the Patriots. He said, ‘No, we’re not gonna drop you. This is what he gets paid for. He gets paid to rush the passer.’ And so, as we’re going right now, we’re looking at how do we take our strengths and we go on within the scheme.” Patterson said.

The former TCU head coach is all about letting his best athletes play to their strengths. He noticed that last year, the defense was often “dropping” its elite edge rushers back into pass coverage to play it safe. Patterson thinks that is a waste of talent. Make no mistake, the Trojans had 30 sacks last season. They ranked between 25th and 35th in the nation. Only if they had played to their potential, they could’ve finished top 10 (39 sacks) in the country.

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He then tells a story about Ed Orgeron and Dave Aranda during LSU’s 2019 championship run to explain his logic. Aranda was frequently dropping a star pass rusher (K’Lavon Chaisson) into coverage until Orgeron stepped in and told him to go after his opposing QB.

By following Aranda’s blueprint, in their 7 games from week 3 till week 10, the Tigers had just about 10 sacks. Guess what happens once they decided to let DE and EDGE hunt the QB? The Tigers’ front-seven managed to get 15 sacks in their final 4 games, including 4 sacks in the 2 playoff games.
Just like that, the Tigers went from ranked 41st to top 10 in sacks with 36-37 sacks.

Even though 4.0 sacks over 2 games doesn’t sound like a huge number, this is exactly what Patterson wants. By stopping the “soft coverage” drops and letting their best athletes stay aggressive at the line, LSU’s defensive front forced Clemson into a miserable 1-of-11 on third downs and held Oklahoma (28) to their lowest point total of that season.

Mind you, USC got a high level of talent on the defensive line this year. You got guys like Braylan Shelby (4.5 sacks), Kameryn Crawford (5.5 sacks), Zurian Fishers, and so on. Patterson’s new plan is to keep those “rush guys” right on the line of scrimmage. He wants them focused on one thing: getting to the ball. He believes that if you’re paying a guy to rush the passer, you let him rush the passer.

To make the scheme work, the team is using a “4-2-5” setup. They have four big linemen up front and five fast defensive backs behind them. What’s more intriguing is Patterson believes this is actually the biggest and most physically gifted group of defensive players he has ever coached. Says the man who has five the no. 1 defense titles throughout his career. By judging his reasoning and last season’s numbers, you can safely put the house on the Trojans to finish top 10 in sacks or even top 5.

To make the defense a whole lot better and fluid, he wants everybody on the Trojans squad to be a part-QB.

Patterson’s locker-room bare-minimum expectation

Gary Patterson is bringing a ‘quarterback’ mindset to the USC defense. The former TCU head coach noticed a big problem with modern players: they spend so much time texting on their phones that they’ve forgotten how to actually talk to each other on the field. He believes a defense that doesn’t communicate is just as broken as a quarterback who can’t call an audible.

To make this one transition easier during spring ball, Patterson is now ditching confusing secret codes and having guys speak in English sentences. Instead of a one-word signal, a player might here just have to yell exactly what the adjustment is so there’s zero confusion or any sorts of ambiguity. The goal is to stop them from overthinking. If they aren’t stuck trying to “translate” a playbook in their heads, they can react way faster and play more aggressively.

Ultimately, this is all about accountability. Since coaches can’t run onto the field during a play to fix a mistake, the players have to be smart enough to handle it themselves. After all, 2026 is the do or die year for Lincoln Riley. Let’s see whether Patterson’s defense was the key missing piece to unlock Lincoln Riley’s Pandora box.