LOS ANGELES — Through the first two weeks of spring practice, new USC head coach Lincoln Riley was pleased with the progress made installing his offense. He said he felt like the program was ahead of schedule in that regard, crediting players for putting in extra work outside of practices and meetings.

“Twenty hours a week is not enough to be an elite college football player,” Riley said last week. “Guys have got to do these little extra things.”

That’s particularly true compared to the offense USC ran the past three seasons.

To be clear, both Riley and former USC offensive coordinator Graham Harrell run variations of the Air Raid. But Harrell’s system was heralded when he arrived in 2019 for its simplicity. There wasn’t an extensive playbook for receivers and other pass catchers to study; rather, you had to learn how to react to the looks that defenses gave you.

Running back Darwin Barlow summed up the differences between the two systems succinctly last week, saying there had been some joking about the subject in his position group meetings so far this spring.

“We was just joking, we said, if you don’t know the play, you could just run a swing (route) last year,” Barlow said. “But now you gotta know.”

Offensive coordinator Josh Henson worked in a similar system at Oklahoma State from 2016-18, which has helped him grasp Riley’s terminology and scheme. Still, he spent hours in the film room with Riley this winter to understand the full extent of the head coach’s offensive philosophies.

“Every adjustment you can go two or three ways with it,” Henson said. “He’s a very curious guy, loves talking football, loves talking about scheme, different ways to attack people.”

The veteran players Riley recruited to USC have noticed this attention to detail, too.

“I’ve never been in a playbook like (this). Coach Riley just got a lot of intelligence in this offense,” running back Travis Dye said. “You can just feel it, that Coach knows what he’s doing to a T.”

Dye says the different language was the toughest part of it for him, but after a month or so with the playbook, he thinks he has it down. Other skill position players like Mario Williams and Malcolm Epps said they similarly felt like they had their roles down in a matter of weeks.

It’s a different story for quarterbacks, though. Caleb Williams had a head start after spending a year with Riley at Oklahoma, but he still feels like he has strides to make in learning the system.

“That will take Tom Brady years and I can’t be in college for Tom Brady years,” Williams said. “There’s always something to learn.”

Part of that comes back to Riley and his ever-evolving approach to the scheme, whether it’s adjusting to the players he has at his disposal or trying something entirely new.

“The hardest part is Coach Riley is so creative, so you never know what kind of wrinkles he’s going to throw in there,” quarterback Miller Moss said. “You can’t just leave this practice, go home, eat, and turn on Netflix and hang out until tomorrow. You have to get into your playbook and invest because if you don’t, you’re going to come out here and look silly.”

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So far, though, Riley feels like the players have put in that extra work.

“We kind of have our base system that we believe in that no matter where we’re at, no matter what our skill sets are that’s going to be part of what we do,” Riley said. “Then so much of it will be tailoring it to our skill sets here and what we have both on this current roster, what we have coming in in the future. So that’ll come a little bit later on, but I think, as far as install we’re a little ahead. The guys have done a nice job picking it up so far.”