Students might be in the academic trenches, but USC football is in the athletic trenches.

The Trojans earned the commitments of two high-level 2025 recruits on the defensive line Sunday, as Justus Terry and Isaiah Gibson — both from Georgia — said ‘yes’ to Head Coach Lincoln Riley’s program.

The duo from the Peach State gives USC three commits in the 2025 recruiting class, the third coming from quarterback Julian Lewis, another player from Georgia. All three are top-100 players in the cycle and vault the Trojans up to the No. 25 recruiting class in the country.

These verbal pledges come soon after USC hired defensive line coach Eric Henderson away from the Los Angeles Rams on Jan. 15, and a mere 20 days after the NCAA football quiet period started, when coaches can only have face-to-face contact with recruits or their parents on a school’s campus.

Henderson quickly got to work on the recruiting process, as he was able to flip Terry’s commitment from the Georgia Bulldogs and secure Gibson’s pledge despite schools like Texas, Alabama, Ohio State, Oklahoma and Georgia recruiting him.

The new defensive line coach may have been helped on the recruiting trail by one of his former players, three-time NFL Defensive Player of the Year Aaron Donald, who made an appearance at a USC practice last week.

Terry is the most eye-popping pull for the Trojans with a five-star rating and is the No. 8 overall player in the 2025 class. Still in high school, Terry stands at 6-foot-5 and weighs a menacing 275 pounds as one of the taller prospects on the defensive line across the country.

While Terry has still not signed with the Trojans — and therefore a lot might happen between now and the time he signs with a school — it would be historic. The last time USC signed a five-star defensive lineman from outside California was in 2013.

Gibson was quick to follow Terry on the commitment train, giving the Trojans another future defensive piece. USC ranked as the No. 116 run defense in the country last season and only recorded a mere 30 sacks, good for No. 50 in the FBS.

Now, the Trojans have a new defensive coordinator in D’Anton Lynn — whose UCLA defense last season ranked in the top five in run defense and sacks — and two new defensive recruits to revamp a USC defense that has hampered the team each of the last two seasons.

The state of Georgia is one of the most talent-filled in the country with 14 of the top-100 players in the 2025 cycle. The Trojans are finally starting to show off their recruiting abilities on a national level, as they have the most verbal pledges from those 14 players than any other school.

There is still a lot of time before the madness of recruiting is over — the Early Signing Period is Dec. 4 this year — and de-commitments are common in this day and age of college football. Terry flipping his pledge from Georgia to USC proves that, but USC has the building blocks to sign one of the best recruiting classes in the country.