“After a year of being the guy, I think the team sees him in a different light,” USC offensive coordinator Graham Harrell said of Kedon Slovis in a press conference Monday.
Heading into his second season as the starting quarterback for the Trojans, Slovis is expected to make a huge leap in production from his freshman year. Harrell didn’t shy away from praising the sophomore’s improvement over the course of the long offseason.
“I think he feels more comfortable checking routes and checking plays than he probably did last year,” Harrell said. “If he sees something, he feels more comfortable attacking it.”
A season ago, Slovis was thrust into the starting role after JT Daniels suffered a season-ending ACL injury in the team’s opener. From there, Slovis started all but one game and gained comfort as the season progressed. Harrell is expecting Slovis to be even more comfortable making key throws in important games this season.
“If you looked down the stretch of last season, he was playing at a really high level and the offense as a whole was playing at a really high level,” Harrell said. “Hopefully we can just build on that.”
Slovis' 2019 regular season campaign ended with three straight wins, with the final victory coming against crosstown rival UCLA. The Trojans put up a season high 52 points against the Bruins and Slovis had arguably his best game of the season, completing 37 of 47 passes for 515 yards and four touchdowns. This passing yard total is also the single-game record for USC.
With the team’s transition from in-person activities to a mostly online format, Harrell and Slovis spent a lot of time on Zoom this offseason studying the offense’s tape in order to solidify Slovis' understanding of Harrell’s system. Harrell, who doubles as the team’s quarterbacks coach, believes this will be a big help to Slovis' game. Having this collective understanding between the quarterback and his coach allows the quarterback to become a better and quicker decision-maker on the field.
“I think if the play-caller and the quarterback are on the same page and are seeing the game the same way, you have an advantage,” Harrell said. “Through Zoom calls and through the quarantine we were able to do that quite a bit.”
Although it may not show up on stat sheets, Harrell made a point to mention Slovis' development in commanding the offense.
“The final place where he has improved is just as a leader,” Harrell said. “For a quarterback, that’s as important as anything.”
Harrell isn’t the only member of the team with high hopes and expectations for Slovis. Slovis himself expects to see a lot of improvement in many aspects of his game.
“[I’m going to] just to give our guys opportunities to make plays,” Slovis said.
More than just getting the ball to his playmakers, Slovis expects to protect the ball better this season.
“Specifically something I look to improve on is committing less turnovers,” the Scottsdale, Ariz. native stated. “The games where I didn’t turn the ball over, we ended up winning and the games that we did lose, it was because probably I was turning the ball over too much.”
Slovis only threw interceptions in five games in 2019, but two of those games ended with the star quarterback throwing three picks. Both resulted in crucial losses against Oregon and BYU.
Expectations for Slovis in particular are sky-high this season, but this hasn’t stopped him from focusing on the team’s main goal: winning.
“If we execute and get the guys the ball in the right spot, we’re going to have success,” Slovis said.
Slovis will look to meet these expectations in USC’s opening game against Arizona State on Nov. 7.