LOS ANGELES — Do not go to a food court with MarShawn Lloyd, lest you seek judgement.

Since he was young, when he first discovered that putting unhealthy things in his body made him just feel weird, the USC running back has gone about his diet religiously. Tried to go about others’, too, with his particular breed of well-meaning intensity that would make longtime trainer Moe Gibson – to be clear, a trainer who’s worked with numerous NFL players – just tell him to smile and relax sometimes.

At times, when out eating, Lloyd would tap Gibson on the shoulder and direct his attention to someone else’s table.

“Look,” Lloyd would say, Gibson remembered. “Look at what he eating.”

The kid wanted only the best for himself, and so he chose to play high school ball at powerhouse DeMatha Catholic in Maryland, about 90 miles from his family’s hometown in Delaware. He’d stay with host families during the week to make it work, former DeMatha coach Elijah Brooks remembered, even crashing at Brooks’ house a couple times.

One such night, with Lloyd as a house guest, Brooks’ family brought home Popeyes for dinner. Lloyd wasn’t about it. And it stunned Brooks – what freshman in high school doesn’t want fast food? 

That night, Brooks remembered, Lloyd drank a gallon of water and ate broiled chicken he’d brought from home.

“I’m focused on making my body a machine,” Brooks recalled Lloyd telling him.

Machine he became, a 5-foot-9, 210-pound runaway snowball of sinew and muscles with their own muscles; when you’re blessed with those kind of gifts, Gibson said, you want the world to see it. And after a couple years working back from an ACL injury his freshman year, the search for opportunity brought Lloyd from South Carolina to Southern California after 2022, just as it did from Delaware to Maryland.

“I just don’t think people have seen all that he can do, against top competition,” Brooks said. “I think people have seen flashes, but because of injuries or what have you, he hasn’t been able to showcase that. And if things continue to progress, he’ll have that opportunity.”

The question, even after an explosive start that’s seen Lloyd seize the top role in the Trojans’ backfield: In the hailstorm of the Air Raid, will he truly have that opportunity at USC?

‘People haven’t seen the real MarShawn’

To be clear, as Lincoln Riley pointed out Thursday – it isn’t as if USC’s throwing the ball 65 times a game. And Lloyd, unquestionably, has already broken out as a Trojan, ranking second in the Pac-12 in rushing yards through five games with 433.

But Riley admitted it himself, after Lloyd ran for 154 yards on just 14 carries at ASU: They probably could’ve given him the ball more. And in a 13-carry, 84-yard effort at Colorado last week where he reversed field for a ridiculous touchdown that earned social media shoutouts from LeBron James and Reggie Bush, Lloyd got just a handful of second-half touches as the Buffs nearly stormed back from a 27-point deficit.

Were there times, Lloyd was asked after the Arizona State game, he wished he could get 20-25 touches a game?

“Oh, I mean, I feel like every player is like, they want the ball in their hands,” Lloyd said, with a pleasant grin. “But, when it comes to a team like this, you just gotta deal with what you get. Can’t have no egos.”

It’s impossibly hard to find any fault with USC’s offense through five games, the highest-scoring unit in the FBS thus far. But Lloyd’s efficiency, averaging a startling 8.3 yards per carry, signals he could earn a few carries more.

“We’re still scoring a point or two,” Riley said of Lloyd’s involvement wryly Thursday, “so I don’t think it’s broken, but we definitely need to do it a little bit better.”

And certainly, Lloyd’s not one to say he should be getting more chances, Brooks was told.

“He should,” Brooks, now the running backs coach at Virginia Tech, answered before a semblance of a question was finished.

That advocacy, of course, inherently comes with bias of a coach who saw Lloyd scrap for his share of the DeMatha offense while being stuck behind now-Pittsburgh Steeler Anthony McFarland Jr. Who, when he first saw Lloyd play in the eighth grade, watched the kid jump over a defensive back standing straight up – think James, Lloyd’s self-described icon, dunking over John Lucas – and land on his feet to score a touchdown.

Story sounds fake, until you go back to Lloyd’s film his sophomore year at South Carolina and see he quite literally did it in a game against Charlotte, too.

“Every time he got the ball and got the rock in his hands,” quarterback Caleb Williams said of his high school days playing Lloyd in a Gonzaga College-DeMatha rivalry, “he would do something crazy or explosive and pretty spectacular.”

That explosiveness, however, didn’t always pop as a Gamecock, as Lloyd struggled his freshman year after a redshirt season rehabbing a torn ACL and was in a frequent time-share in the backfield in a more productive sophomore year.

“I think people haven’t seen the real MarShawn,” Brooks said. “A healthy MarShawn. And if he can get through an entire season without any setbacks, I think the sky’s the limit for him.”

‘Ready to pretty much put everything on the line’

Lloyd was raised in an all-female household in Delaware, his mother Na-Shawn filling both parental roles – a “no-nonsense” woman, as Gibson said, who was tough on Lloyd.

And in turn, Lloyd’s mentality was always to push for his family, Gibson said. One day hoping to take care of his mother. His sisters.

“Being able to put up with everything she’s put me through, and doing whatever it takes … I’m just ready to pretty much put everything on the line,” Lloyd said, “and do whatever it is to make it up for her.”

Gibson, who was also Lloyd’s running backs coach at DeMatha, caught on quick – with dieting, with his stone face in meeting rooms – that the kid was serious about football. So serious, at times, that the amount of questions he asked got on Gibson’s nerves.

Lloyd’s main struggle, Gibson said, was always patience. Antsy, sometimes, with the ball in his hands, waiting for a gap to open; antsy, sometimes, waiting for his year in the sun, knowing his own level of dedication. And after his first game at USC against San Jose State, when he gained just 42 yards on nine carries, Lloyd told media he was “just wanting a big play.”

He went through the same journey at DeMatha, Gibson remembered. When you’re blessed with leap-over-a-dude talent, you want the world to see it, an urgency that it has to happen now.

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As he relaxed into the system, the game came to him – same as it’s coming now at USC, where a strong junior season could make him “a Day One guy,” Brooks said, in the NFL draft.

Jitters are over with, Lloyd said back in September, after a 77-yard game against Stanford. Antsy no more.

He even lets himself have cheat days now, indulging in Insomnia Cookies or Shake Shack a few times a week. In an effort to gain weight, sure, but still.

“I’m ready to go,” Lloyd said after the Stanford game. “Definitely, patience is there, just believing in my coach and believing in the scheme.”

“Everything,” he continued, “is going to be just fine.”