College football 2018 preview: 15 freshmen poised to make instant impact

1. JT Daniels, QB, USC

Sam Darnold is now expected to be the savior of the New York Jets. While we’re still in the midst of his first preseason, that still remains to be seen. But when you put the focus back on college football, there is now a tall task ahead of the USC Trojans and head coach Clay Helton.

Darnold, even with his struggles last season in comparison to the year before, was huge for this offense. He gave them stability at the quarterback position and a leader on offense, two things that are hard to replace.

However, there is no time for excuses with a team like USC and they aren’t going to look to make any. Instead, they are going to look to JT Daniels to replace Darnold as the Mater Dei product was named the starter as a true freshman for the 2018 season.

A 5-star recruit, Daniels was pegged by many as potentially the top overall recruit for the 2019 class, but he ultimately reclassified and was the second-best pro-style quarterback of the 2018 class when he committed to play for the Trojans.

He has nice size at 6-foot-2, 205 pounds, but even more impressive are his mechanics and power as a passer. He seems ready already to make any throw on the field. The pressure will surely be on Daniels right out of the gate given that its USC and he’s such a highly touted recruit. However, with a friendly offense and his talent, he appears poised to make noise for the Trojans already.