Inside the Trojans' Huddle: USC DL Jahkeem Stewart injured, San Jose State Week 0 preview, fan questions

We will do a San Jose kinda preview with some questions at the end, but we have to talk about the headline news over the weekend, which is defensive lineman Jaquim Stewart suffered another stress fracture in his foot, the same foot that he was playing on injured in 2025 and he is expected to miss the first three games of the season.

Now, it has not been, you know, fully confirmed by Lincoln Riley.

That'll probably be done here at the end of practice, uh, Tuesday.

Uh, but we have s- sourced, you know, uh, plenty of times, uh, that, you know, he's gonna be missing several weeks, first few stretches of the game.

Now, obviously it's not the worst case scenario, but it does suck.

You know, it does suck.

You know, Jaquim is one of the young stars of this team, and there was a lot of expectations for him this year now that he was, quote, "fully healthy" going into 2026.

But again, he will be delayed going into 2026 season.

Scott, I'm gonna throw it to you first.

Reaction, any concern just with Jaquim not being there for the first three weeks?

I mean, I, I'm not, I'm s- not sure that the, the first three weeks is the concern really.

I, I think that USC is gonna manage to be, you know, to, to put guys in there that are gonna get the job done.

But, you know, once you move on and you start facing some, some tougher opponents, uh, such as Oregon and Ohio State and h- and down the road.

But it's, it's, you know, it's more about him really.

You know, you start having these injury, uh, issues with, with feet and, and so on, if they're recurring, you know, you, you just never know where it's gonna lead.

And I just wanna, I just wanna make sure that we say this as well.

I had a, I had a conversation with somebody from, from the region of the country that he's from, and this was before our Q&A the other day.

And the convers- part of that conversation was is that Jaquim had had some issues in high school, injury issues in high school, and he, he did not It was something we answered in a question, I answered in a question, I think Mark may have touched on it too in a video.

And we just wanna be clear that Jakeem Stewart did not have injury issues in high school.

And so, it was important for, for, for me to, to correct that.

I don't think that many people had seen it.

It was behind the paywall.

It was a Q&A.

It's not like it was a story about Jakeem.

Nevertheless, it was something we put out there, and people did read it, and we wanted to make sure that we set the record straight.