He drops back, studying his reflection as it dances. He mimes a handoff. He mimes a three-step drop. His legs repeat, drilling himself, tracing his footsteps. Again. Again.

Football is – it’s an art, Longstreet explains later, finally settling on the right word.

“Like, it’s a canvas,” he says, stretching his hands out in front of him. “You can write whatever you want on it.”

Longstreet, the five-star QB at the center of USC’s future, writes with passion. He writes with love. He was homeschooled in the seventh grade, his parents hoping it’d build discipline; it did, but not quite in the way they hoped. He’d put off his homework to watch clips of Kobe Bryant, engrossed in his mentality. He’d look up and jot down every step of Tom Brady’s workout regimen, his sleep schedule, his nutrition.

He’s beaten the sun every morning since. He’s beaten the sun again, this Thursday morning in November. It’s still dark in Lake Forest, and thwacks echo across the empty parking lot in front of Saddleback Strength and Conditioning, as Longstreet whips a medicine ball at a concrete wall inside. Sophia Longstreet sits outside in a Nissan, for two hours, scrolling on her phone. Her son needed a ride. He didn’t need supervision.

“Like, he’s different,” trainer Tony Velasquez gushes. Longstreet overhears and grins.

The kid’s life is simple. Longstreet wakes up at 3:30 a.m. He prays. He stretches. He goes to school. He practices. He studies the playbook. He sleeps. Faith, family, football. Any kind of flash, as he says, isn’t “part of my thing.”

Flash, ultimately, is not USC head coach Lincoln Riley’s thing, either. He valued Longstreet’s mentality, as Riley gushed on National Signing Day. He values his dedication to the game. Eventually, across a whirlwind of a recruitment, Longstreet became his guy.

Eventually.

Anthony Catalano, Centennial’s assistant head coach, was honestly surprised it worked out. Kevin Longstreet didn’t think his son would be a Trojan. For months, USC was committed to another quarterback. For months, Longstreet was committed to Texas A&M. It all could’ve easily been unraveled by ego, as Riley stuck by Georgia five-star Julian Lewis for much of the cycle.

Longstreet, ultimately, didn’t care. He didn’t care that USC pursued Lewis instead of him. He didn’t care that he was offered “way less” money to play at USC than at Texas A&M, as father Kevin said.

“I mean, it’s a lot of places I could’ve went and got money, and just did that,” Longstreet says. “But it wasn’t, it wasn’t – it’s never that. It’s never a money thing, for me.”

This was about his future teacher, in Riley. This was about art. This was about his canvas.

A natural fit

In his junior year, Longstreet arrived at Centennial, after transferring from Inglewood, weighing roughly 170 pounds. On that Thursday at Saddleback, strapping a heavy vest to his chest for power-cleans and crunches, he sat at 205 pounds. Catalano has never heard of Longstreet eating any kind of fast food. Not once.

“My goal,” Longstreet said of his physical development, “was to be like, ‘What would I look like at the next level right now?’”

That’s dictated his mentality, for much of his life, in all areas. In that time he was homeschooled, Longstreet listened to Bryant’s words and did a self-evaluation. He wasn’t fulfilling his true potential, he felt. Again, he was in seventh grade. Didn’t matter. I know I can do more, Longstreet told himself.

He arrived at Centennial to prepare himself to learn the game of collegiate football. He was in charge of pass-protection. He audibled. He checked out of plays to scramble. Throughout his recruitment, Catalano remembered, Longstreet was most interested in the intricacies of various programs’ offenses. At one point, while being recruited by Auburn, he called former Tigers quarterback and current Green Bay Packer Malik Willis to pepper him with questions on Auburn’s system.

Where did you feel prepared for the NFL? Where did you feel behind? 

“I don’t know what else he would do,” Catalano said of Longstreet, “if he didn’t have football. And you can’t say that about every kid.”

The top goal for Longstreet has been to make it to the NFL. A natural fit, then, existed 50 miles northwest of Corona, with a coach in South L.A. who’d produced five quarterbacks that started NFL games in 2024. It was the “writing on the wall,” Longstreet says, to choose USC and Riley.

USC just didn’t choose him, for a year.

Riley has recruited his quarterbacks with extreme precision, dating to his days at Oklahoma, one to rule them all, every two years. And Lewis, long viewed as the top quarterback in the class, had committed to Riley in August 2023, and reclassed from 2026 to 2025 partly at the USC head coach’s behest. Both sides held firm, even as Lewis took highly publicized visits to other programs and never publicly shut down his commitment.

“That guy has tremendous loyalty,” Kevin Longstreet said, reflecting on Riley’s process. “He will go into battle, and he would die with his guys. You know what I mean? And that’s a good thing. It could be a bad thing, it could be a good thing. And that’s what we got from him.”

Longstreet had wanted to play for USC since he was 9, when his family moved to California from Louisiana, watching Amon-Ra St. Brown and JT Daniels ball at Mater Dei and go on to USC. But Lewis was committed. And Lewis reclassed. And Longstreet never met Riley in person throughout that period. So Longstreet pledged to Texas A&M in the spring of 2024.

One thread still remained, though. One thread that refused to fray. His name was Luke Huard.

‘You’re the guy we want’

By blood, Huard is a quarterback. Brother Damon played in the NFL. Brother Brock played in the NFL. Nephew Sam played for Washington. Huard, himself, played for North Carolina.

A couple years ago, when Huard was USC’s inside-receivers coach, he visited Inglewood to check out now-Oregon tight end Jamari Johnson. But Huard, who became USC’s quarterbacks coach in 2024, came away particularly drawn to Longstreet. Huard told him he liked his grit, Longstreet remembered.

For months that followed, Longstreet’s father Kevin said, Huard “never wavered” from Longstreet, even as USC had Lewis committed. On visits to Centennial, Huard would walk up to Kevin at practice and bellow the same words.

I’m going to coach your son, he’d tell Longstreet’s father. I’m going to coach your son one day.

“I was kind of laughing it off,” Kevin chuckled, “like, ‘I don’t know, man.’”

They were never in consideration for Longstreet in the winter and spring, Catalano reflected. The sands shifted, though, in the summer, Lewis still taking visits: Auburn, Indiana, Colorado. House of Victory’s final offer to Lewis dangled. Quietly, Riley met Longstreet for the first time in August, part of an all-out push by USC to flip him from Texas A&M.

“They finally, for the first time, told him to his face – ‘You’re the guy we want,’” Catalano recalled.

Longstreet was loyal, same as Riley. He stuck with Texas A&M. But the seed was planted. As the Aggies’ season progressed, Longstreet started reviewing tape of an offense that finished 94th of 134 FBS teams in passing yards per game in 2024. He loved head coach Mike Elko. He loved offensive coordinator Collin Klein. He did not love the scheme.

“And that’s when Coach Riley and those guys came back around, and was like, ‘Listen, look at what you’re doing (at A&M),’” Kevin said. “And Coach Riley, shoot, put the fork in him. You know what I mean? It was done.”

Riley had planted himself in Longstreet’s ear, the quarterback seeing a spread-out offense that more clearly prioritized the pass. Quietly, as Kevin remembered, Longstreet told Riley over the phone he was coming, a month before he actually flipped. His dad tried to slow his roll, telling him they hadn’t much as seen USC’s weight room yet. Dude, what is wrong with you? But his heart had changed.

Things fell into line quickly. The week before USC’s game against Nebraska on Nov. 16, Longstreet committed under-the-table to USC. After a win that night, Longstreet walked into the locker room and told the coaching staff he was coming. The next morning, Longstreet called Texas A&M and let him know he was flipping; USC, according to Longstreet, then called Lewis to inform him.

Lewis’ father T.C. largely declined to comment on the exact sequence of events, but said he hoped “nothing but the best” for USC and Riley. Lewis flipped to Colorado.

Once the news became public, Riley FaceTimed Longstreet. Over the phone, USC’s newest quarterback heard USC’s John McKay Center roaring.

“Coach Riley said, it’s the most excited,” Longstreet remembered, “he’s been in a while.”

‘It’s not about me’

On Thursday, Longstreet walked out of USC’s John McKay Center for the program’s bowl-game practice with the rest of the team, wearing a white hoodie. He wasn’t in pads. His paperwork hadn’t been fully cleared, just yet.

But he’d already joined the program, immediately after his graduation from Centennial. Weeks ago, he’d built a regimen with Velasquez and his father, designing workouts at Saddleback to physically prepare himself to step immediately into collegiate football. Longstreet’s been reviewing Riley’s playbook, too, since his Centennial season ended in late November, aiming to get cleared to suit up with USC for a couple bowl-game practices.

“I mean, just another situation of, if I am going to be that guy,” Longstreet said last week, “it’s not going to take long for me to just, understand the offense.”

Whether Riley will trust him immediately remains to be seen. Rising redshirt junior Jayden Maiava seems poised to continue as USC’s starter come 2025, a dual-threat chaos agent who impressed and frustrated across three starts to close 2024.

“I mean, I’m always gonna look for competition, so,” Longstreet said last week. “I’m blessed enough to just be in a position and – have the chance to go in and battle with Jayden.”

“But, 100%, I mean, if he wins the job, I’m behind him 100%,” Longstreet continued. “I’m, I like to do what’s best for the team. It’s not about me.”

At the same time, after last week’s workout at Saddleback, he waxed poetic about his hopes for the future at USC. He beamed from ear to ear when discussing fellow top 2025 signee Jahkeem Stewart, a five-star defensive lineman, noting the program now had “two young leaders on both sides of the ball.” This 2025 season, Longstreet promised, would be special.

Finally, asked what message he had for USC’s fans, he paused and smiled.

“Be ready for this season,” he answered. “Because, we’re going to go get a natty this year. For sure.”

This year?, he was asked.

“This year.”

Asked again if he was standing on that, Longstreet smiled: “Yes, I stand on that. We’re going to win a natty. This year.”

ocregister.com

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