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USC football’s playoff aspirations rest on depth, rotation and being more fresh

“We all had a bad taste in our mouth after last season,” Clay Helton said on USC football’s first day of Fall Camp on Friday.

Despite winning the Pac-12 for the first time since 2008, the Trojans’ 2017 season ended in eye-opening defeat to Ohio State in the Cotton Bowl. The conclusion drawn from that game by coaches, players and certainly fans: USC was far from a playoff-caliber team.

Helton’s goal is to change that in the 2018 and he’s identified one welcome lesson from that disappointing day in Dallas.

“We’re going to play a lot of kids.