Booty is in his comfort zone
It had been a while, but USC quarterback John David Booty felt right at home on Tuesday as the Trojans ran some plays out of the shotgun formation for the first time since he arrived on campus in 2003.
"I'd been hoping that it was coming for a long time — it brought back a lot of memories," said John David Booty, who operated a shotgun offense during high school at Evangel Christian Academy in Shreveport, La. "I'm definitely excited to at least try it out. It's a great weapon for us potentially if it works."
USC, which could open the season ranked No. 1, will not move away from having its quarterback take the snap from under center. But Coach Pete Carroll and offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian determined that the time was right to experiment.
"Every off-season we look at a number of things — this is a just a wrinkle we're looking at to see if we want to incorporate it," Sarkisian said. "If you look around our league and the NFL there are a lot of teams using it.
"We've been extremely successful on third downs. We always want to be the best, so if this can get us into the 60% [conversion rate] range, it's worth doing. If not we have a real good thing going."
Sarkisian said John David Booty looked comfortable in the formation.
"It looked like he was going to play a game in Shreveport," Sarkisian said.
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