With Big Ten media days fast approaching and fall camp slated to open shortly thereafter, the 2024 college football season is right around the corner. In year two of the Luke Fickell era, Wisconsin has further revamped its roster but faces a daunting schedule littered with marquee matchups.

Throughout July, BadgerBlitz.com will break down each game on Wisconsin's slate. We'll continue with USC, the Badgers' Big Ten opener. Yes, you read that right.

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After playing host to Alabama and an early bye week, Wisconsin will have the pleasure of facing its second consecutive blue-blood program in USC. This time, the Badgers will travel to Southern California and the Coliseum, where the Trojans enter a new era in Lincoln Riley's third year as head coach.

Let's start with the obvious: USC now faces life without Caleb Williams, its eighth Heisman winner and the No. 1 overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft. The dazzling quarterback was must-watch television every week, and did an excellent job masking some of the flaws Riley is still trying to amend as he shapes the Trojans in his vision.

Even with Williams, USC had a rather disappointing season in 2023. The Trojans finished 8-5 and without a signature win. They dropped close conference games to Arizona, Utah, Oregon and Washington, and also fell at the hands of rival Notre Dame. As a final sour taste in the mouths of the USC faithful, the Trojans lost to cross-town rival UCLA by 18 points to close out the regular season. Their victory over Louisville in the Holiday Bowl prevented them from closing the season on a four-game slide, but it was little consolation for a team that started the season ranked No. 6 in the AP poll.

As has been a trend with Riley-coached teams dating back to his days at Oklahoma, USC's defense was its downfall. Despite boasting the No. 3 scoring offense in the country, the Trojans' scoring and total defense both ranked in the bottom 15 nationally. The dichotomy of pairing one of the most electrifying college quarterbacks ever with a defense that was essentially a national punchline was ultimately USC's downfall.

After firing much-maligned defensive coordinator Alex Grinch, who now coaches the safety room at Wisconsin, the Trojans poached D'Anton Lynn from UCLA to call the shots defensively. USC hopes that a revitalized defense and the fruits of Riley's recruiting efforts can return them to the prominence we've come to expect from one of the most storied programs in college football.

Miller Moss is the man with the unenviable task of replacing Williams at quarterback. Still, his reputation proceeds him. A top-10 quarterback in the class of 2021, Moss threw for 681 yards, seven touchdowns and one interception while completing over 70 percent of his passes in relief work last season.

He'll orchestrate an offense that needs to replace many of its top playmakers as well. USC's leading rusher in 2023, Marshawn Lloyd, now plays for the Green Bay Packers. Its leading receiver, Tahj Washington, plays for the Miami Dolphins. Its second-leading receiver Brenden Rice plays for the Los Angeles Chargers.

In line to replace the production at receiver are Duce Robinson, Ja'Kobi Lane and Zachariah Branch, among others. Branch, a shifty slot receiver, was one of the most dynamic true freshman in the sport last fall. He's a blur in the open field, often with his mouthguard dangling haphazardly from his helmet. He'll return kickoffs and punts as well, because good things happen when the ball is in his hands.

On the ground, it'll be extremely difficult to replicate the whopping 7.1 yards-per-carry that Lloyd posted last fall. Woody Marks, a transfer from Mississippi State, is the most experienced ball-carrier the Trojans have and he's first in line to start at tailback. Marks is also an excellent receiver out of the backfield, piling up 154 catches during his time in Starkville. That could prove vital while USC breaks in a new starting quarterback.

In the offensive trenches, the Trojans return their center (Jonah Monheim) and left guard (Emmanuel Pregnon) but will also rely on contributions from youngsters, such as the true sophomore Alani Noa and redshirt freshman Elijah Paige. Overall, this is a unit that has the pieces to be an offensive juggernaut once again in 2024. They'll take a step back, but Moss is the X-factor in determining just how far.

Unsurprisingly, USC's defense will look extremely different in 2024 after it was repeatedly shredded last fall. As many as five transfers could start immediately for the Trojans, with more transfers populating the two-deep.

The new defensive coordinator Lynn brought two of his top players in the secondary with him from UCLA: cornerback John Humphrey and safety Kamari Ramsey. Both are expected to start, and both are difference makers.

Another transfer expected to make an immediate impact is the former Oregon State linebacker Easton Mascarenas-Arnold. In 2023, he racked up a staggering 106 tackles to go along with two sacks and two interceptions. He's the kind of experienced difference-maker and field-general this team desperately needed at middle linebacker.

On the defensive line, Bear Alexander remains one of the better players at his position in the sport. The ex-Georgia Bulldog put together a very solid season last year with 47 tackles, 6.5 tackles-for-loss and 1.5 sacks. He'll be a good test for the interior of Wisconsin's offensive line.

Last season, USC's secondary struggled mightily, giving up around 246 yards-per-game through the air. But the running defense was even worse on a national scale, as only 14 programs in the nation surrendered more yards-per-game on the ground. The Trojans may be restocked defensively, but its reasonable to expect programs to run it down their throat until they prove they can stop it. With the Badgers' detail of massive offensive linemen, expect a similar line of reasoning from Phil Longo on Sept. 28.

We've mentioned his name already, but Branch is the very definition of a player to watch. He moves differently than everyone else on the field, seemingly playing the game at his own speed and still just a true sophomore.

What's more, you'll see plenty of him. Riley makes a concerted effort to get Branch the ball in a variety of creative ways such as screens and reverses. Branch also fielded about 75 percent of USC's kick and punt returns, scoring two touchdowns in the process. His 20.4 yards-per-return on punts is an eye-popping number.

Not many teams are equipped to guard Branch. Wisconsin will surely have eyes all over him. It's nearly impossible to stop him from getting the ball, in large part because of the aforementioned concepts Riley dials up to get the ball in his hands. But the key will be containing him once he takes the handoff or makes the catch — easier said than done.

We spoke to Ryan Young of TrojanSports to dive deeper into USC:

1. WHAT'S THE BUZZ ON MILLER MOSS?

Miller Moss is a great story of perseverance. He committed to USC as a highly-rated four-star prospect in the 2021 class even though USC already had another four-star commit at the time (Jake Garcia, who would later flip to Miami) and would then pursue yet another four-star QB in that class in Jaxson Dart (who signed with USC and started games his freshman season before transferring to Ole Miss). Moss remained steady through it all, as well as the coaching change that brought in Lincoln Riley and QB Caleb Williams after that season.

Even still, many presumed Riley would bring in another high-profile transfer to replace Williams -- at least because the Trojans' were down to two scholarship QBs and needed to add an arm. They did court K-State transfer Will Howard before he ended up at Ohio State, but Moss basically won the job in the Holiday Bowl when he threw for 372 yards, 6 TDs and 1 INT in his first career start. Riley essentially admitted that Moss' performance chased off other veteran transfers they might have been looking at but also that it shifted their focus to finding a younger QB to come in and fill out the depth chart.

Moss didn't just win the job that day -- he won it over the month of December while taking the leadership reins after a lost season and galvanizing the players who remained leading into that bowl game. He's a smart player, an accurate passer and he's gotten better every year behind the scenes. His greatest strength may be as a leader, though, as he has the full support of that locker room as he now takes over for the former Heisman Trophy winner Williams.

2. WHAT DOES NEW DC D'ANTON LYNN NEED TO DO TO SHORE UP USC'S DEFENSE?

To be honest, the Trojans probably still don't have the talent and depth needed to be an elite defense, but they should be immediately better with a new defensive staff taking over. In his lone season as a defensive coordinator (and college coach, for that matter), Lynn turned UCLA around from a defense ranked in the 80s in total defense to a top 10 unit. His NFL background has meshed well with players and recruits, and if he can simply make USC a more organized, better-coached unit it should lead to a substantial improvement from the nadir the Trojans hit on that side of the ball last season.

But more specifically, everything has to improve. USC was one of the 10 worst defenses in the country last season in giving up plays of 20 yards or more. The Trojans were a bad tackling team that got gashed for long runs but also a team prone to coverage breakdowns downfield. The first thing Lynn has to do is shore up the tackling and then the run defense. USC is still thin on the interior of the defensive line, but it brought in Oregon State transfer Easton Mascarenas-Arnold-- one of the more dependable LBs in the Pac-12 last season -- to take over at middle linebacker. USC also brought in a wave of transfers in the secondary, including two of Lynn's former UCLA starters in S Kamari Ramsey and CB John Humphrey, to remake the back half of the season.

Lynn and the Trojans have a lot to prove, but there's a lot of optimism for a defensive turnaround.

3. HOW HIGH ARE THE EXPECTATIONS FOR USC OVERALL THIS SEASON?

I think many fans are starting to have questions about Lincoln Riley's ability to get the Trojans over the hump, especially now in transitioning into the Big Ten, so this shapes up as a pivotal season for him. The extra challenge is that USC plays a brutal schedule with LSU and Notre Dame on top of its Big Ten slate. Many fans see that schedule, the reality that Caleb Williams is now in the NFL, and that key questions remain about the offensive line (especially the depth), the defensive line and the defense in general, and think another 7 or 8-win season may be a realistic outcome. But if Lynn can work the same wonders with this defense that he did at UCLA and Moss plays to the potential Riley and many others think he can, the Trojans could certainly surprise people.

4. WHO OR WHAT IS THE BIGGEST X-FACTOR ON THE TEAM?

Well, a lot certainly hinges on Moss. He couldn't have been much better in his first career starter last December, but that's still really the only sample size we have of him playing significant snaps. So this offense will go as he goes, and this team is going to need the offense to be elite again to have a chance at its goals. Beyond Moss, the Trojans have a youth movement at wide receiver with four high-upside second-year WRs poised for breakout seasons in former five-stars Zachariah Branch and Duce Robinson, fellow former top-100 prospect Makai Lemon and the significantly underrated Ja'Kobi Lane. Defensively, USC needs either junior Anthony Lucas or sophomore Braylan Shelby to emerge as a pass-rush threat and needs better linebacker play across the board.

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