With Spring Comes Fervor at USC

Pete Carroll calls them his “circling habits,” the way he walks around the practice field with a slightly forward tilt, shifting from one group of players to another.

One moment, the USC football coach checks on receivers running sideline routes. The next, he shows a linebacker the angle of pursuit from a particular defense.

“I like getting into it,” he said. “There is always a teachable moment waiting for me.”

With the Trojans in spring practice, all eyes are on the new guy. How will he adjust to the college game after so many years in the NFL? What will he do to revive a team that suffered five consecutive losses last season?

A few days aren’t much to gauge by, but there have been glimpses of a fresh tone and tenor.

“Right now, it’s about work ethic,” he said. “We have so much work to do.”

So far, Carroll has stuck to the pattern he envisioned months ago when he hired Norm Chow as offensive coordinator and decided to oversee the defense himself.

He spends time with the offense early each practice, then focuses primarily on his squad. Sometimes he watches from afar with a thoughtful stance, hand on chin, looking crisp in khaki pants and white polo shirt.

Other times, Carroll flashes into action, demonstrating a technique, picking up a football to throw long passes during drills. The secondary is his area of expertise and a sore spot for the Trojans, who were vulnerable to big plays last season.

“He knows a lot,” linebacker Aaron Graham said. “You try to listen to every little detail he tells us.”

While the defense has a new set of schemes, the change on offense is even more pronounced. That work falls to Chow, who comes from Brigham Young by way of North Carolina State.

Both of those teams featured quick-throwing spread offenses. Now the Trojans are lining up in formations they rarely, if ever, used last season, moving at an accelerated clip.

Standing to one side, Chow barks at his quarterbacks: “Come on, we’ve got to throw this thing.” The change of pace has been a tonic for a team with a sour taste in its mouth.

“Last year, this team as a whole was stagnant,” tight end Alex Holmes said. “We don’t want to be like that anymore.”

The offense is scrambling to acclimate. Players say Chow’s system is straightforward but there is much to learn.

“We’re bombarding them with information,” Chow said. “We’ll pull back later.”

A sense of urgency might be expected with any new staff, not to mention a team eager to bounce back from a 5-7 record.

Assistant Wayne Moses leads his running backs from one part of the field to another, sprinting ahead, chirping “Let’s go, let’s go.” Ed Orgeron and Kennedy Pola, carry-overs from the Paul Hackett era, have been as vocal as ever. Carroll stops an agility drill for defensive linemen, admonishing them to work harder.

The staff also has been noting “loafs”--instances when players cruise or stop short of the whistle. The first practice “they counted over 100 loafs,” Graham said. “They want us to run. They’re very, very intense.”

Yet the players say Carroll and his assistants are surprisingly casual off the field.

“It’s a whole different vibe,” defensive lineman Lonnie Ford said. “Coach Carroll relates to the players in the way he comes up to you and asks how you are doing.”

Said fullback Charlie Landrigan: “It’s being able to go and talk to him, talk about every day things, what’s going on in school, what movies you’ve seen.”

No surprise given the reputation Carroll acquired with the New York Jets and New England Patriots. It is his coaching tenet--the better he knows the players, the better to teach them.

After practice on a recent evening, as the team left the field, Carroll stayed behind to throw to Kori Dickerson, who is switching from linebacker to tight end. Carroll demonstrated hand positions for various catches, high and low.

Coach and player lingered for half an hour. Carroll was like a kid taking one more at-bat before dark, his mother calling him for dinner.

“I have so much fun,” he said. “I hate going in.”