quarterback job

Thursday might be an off-day for the Dodgers.

But for their most intriguing recent draft pick, it’s also the opening day of a different kind of season.

In the 17th round of last month’s MLB draft, the Dodgers took a flier on University of Missouri pitcher Sam Horn, a 6-foot-4 right-hander with a big fastball, a promising slider and an athletic, projectable build.

Like most late-round prospects hoping to become a diamond in the rough, Horn came with questions. He pitched just 15 innings in his college career after undergoing Tommy John surgery as a sophomore. His limited body of work led to a wide range of scouting opinions.

In Horn’s case, however, the biggest unknowns had nothing to do with his potential as a pitcher.

Because, starting Thursday night, he will also be under center as quarterback for Missouri’s football team.

Horn is not only a two-sport athlete, but someone still undecided on whether his future will be on a mound or the gridiron. As a quarterback, he was a four-star recruit in Missouri’s 2022 signing class. And this fall, he has been locked in a battle with Penn State transfer Beau Pribula, jockeying for first-string signal-caller duties at an SEC program coming off a 10-win season.

When Missouri opens its 2025 football schedule Thursday night against Central Arkansas, Pribula will play the first half, and Horn will play the second half. As for the rest of the season, Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz has yet to hand either player all the keys to the offense.

“I think both quarterbacks have done an excellent job of doing the things that we’ve asked them to do, and there wasn’t enough separation that I felt like there was a clear-cut starter,” Drinkwitz told reporters this week. “And so the next-best evaluation is in a live football game to see how guys respond, not only to preparation and a game plan, but also respond to a crowd, also respond to being tackled and being hit.”

It’s a QB battle that Dodgers officials have followed with fascination throughout Missouri’s fall camp.

Already, the club has signed Horn to a baseball contract with an almost $500,000 signing bonus (well above the norm for the 525th overall pick).

The question now is whether he ever ends up playing for them.

“We’re pleasantly hoping he does,” Dodgers vice president of baseball operations Billy Gasparino said this week. “We think there’s a whole window of opportunity to get him much better, and quickly.”

Once upon a time, the Dodgers viewed Horn as one of college baseball’s better pitching prospects. Even in a limited sample size as a freshman in 2023, Gasparino said the team evaluated him as having potential future first-round talent.

“He’s a tremendous athlete,” said Gasparino, the longtime point man for the Dodgers’ draft operations. “He has really good arm action. I think that part was very elite.”

By the time Horn actually became draft-eligible this summer, though, uncertainties about his future made his scouting process unique.

All along, Horn signaled to MLB teams that he wanted to play football this fall. As a redshirt junior, he will have another season of eligibility in football next year as well. Gasparino said the narrative around Horn, who is originally from Lawrenceville, Ga., is that “baseball is his first love.”

“But,” Gasparino added, “he definitely seemed split on what he wanted to do going forward.”

This is not the first recent example of the Dodgers drafting a power-conference college quarterback.

Two years ago, they used their final 20th-round selection in the 2023 draft on then-Oregon State quarterback DJ Uiagalelei, a former two-sport star at St. John Bosco. Uiagalelei, however, never signed with the team. As a highly-touted five-star talent with NFL aspirations, he never made the switch to baseball either, his draft rights with the Dodgers lapsing after he transferred to Florida State for the 2024 football season.

Horn’s situation appears to be different. Unlike Uiagalelei (who never actually pitched collegiately), he spent the last three years on Missouri’s baseball team. And if he doesn’t win the starting quarterback job with the Tigers football squad this fall, his odds of reporting to the Dodgers next spring figure to be much more realistic.

That’s why, as Missouri’s QB battle has unfolded this preseason, Gasparino scoured Missouri recruiting site message boards and local news outlets, looking for any indication of which way the program was leaning.

“The coach is going to give nothing,” Gasparino said jokingly. “So you kind of have to go on the message boards, and to the local writers, to figure out, ‘Alright, who is winning? What is going on?’ It’s been kind of a hard read.”

Leading up to the draft, Horn’s situation also required extra scouting legwork. The Dodgers dusted off his old freshman year and high school evaluations, after he pitched just 10 ⅔ innings in Missouri’s spring baseball season coming off his Tommy John procedure. They also reached out to NFL scouting departments and college football recruiters, “just to figure out how talented he was at football,” Gasparino said.

The Dodgers do have downside protection if Horn ultimately decides to stick with the football, with Gasparino noting that “to actually get his signing bonus, he has to come to us.”

But in the meantime, they’ll be keeping a close eye on Missouri’s football season — starting with Thursday night’s opener in which Horn is slated to see the field.

“Definitely gonna be watching,” Gasparino said. “I mean, I guess first, it’s like, don’t get hurt. But also just hoping that the right answer becomes very clear on what he should do sport-wise … Of course, we’d be disappointed if it’s not baseball. But would hate another year of in-between.”

When he was first announced as USC’s starting quarterback last November, Jayden Maiava stepped into a pretty thorny situation. The team already had rallied behind Miller Moss, who spent the previous three seasons earning teammates’ trust. Plus, he’d have only a few games to prove himself, and USC desperately needed immediate results.

“That’s a hard thing for anyone to do,” said wideout Ja’Kobi Lane, a close friend of Moss.

Those four starts, as uneven as they sometimes were, proved enough for Maiava to retain the title as the Trojans’ presumptive quarterback this spring, even as USC added five-star freshman Husan Longstreet and experienced transfer Sam Huard to the fold. But what’s happened in the three months since ultimately may say more about where Maiava is headed as a quarterback — and whether he’ll keep the job for good this season.

Maiava’s second act started in January with speculation that he was entertaining the idea of entering the transfer portal. But he brushed off that notion Tuesday.

“Shoot, the transfer portal is crazy nowadays,” Maiava said. “I usually just don’t pay any mind or attention to it. I just kind of go about my business and stay out the way.”

For Maiava, that meant spending as much time in the film room as possible. “Countless hours,” the quarterback said.

It was on film that he could see how often he got “happy feet” in the pocket during his first season at USC. He worked to pinpoint the reasons for head-scratching mistakes that seemed to follow him every week. Namely the back-breaking interceptions, three of which he threw in the bowl game. He was, as Lincoln Riley said Monday, “his own toughest critic.”

Though the coach was quick to point out that self-criticism was useful only to a point with Maiava.

USC coach Lincoln Riley talks with Trojans quarterback Jayden Maiava during a game against Nebraska at the Coliseum on Nov. 16.

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

“He’s a guy who sometimes he can almost overdo it,” Riley said. “He naturally has that ability to really be critical of himself, to really put everything he can into the areas he doesn’t. You’re never going to see him like, ‘Oh, I’m so good at this, I’m going to take it for granted and not put work into it.’ Like he’s the complete opposite of that. Which is great. He’s a driven worker and he wants to play a lot better for us than he did last year. And he played pretty darn good. So that’s a pretty good sign.”

Maiava still will have to compete through preseason camp, Riley clarified, if only because “there always has to be a competition.”

“Now does Jayden come in a step ahead in experience and all that of the other guys in the room? Of course he does,” Riley said Monday during the “Trojans Live” radio show. “But the best guy is going to play, and that’s, to me, No. 1 and that should always be the case.”

Longstreet may be the most likely to push Maiava, given his pedigree coming out of Corona Centennial High. He also spent as much time as he could at USC’s bowl practices, soaking it all in.

That extra work and time has paid off.

“He’s way further ahead than most guys would be at this age,” Riley said. “His ability to communicate and manage the group right now as a young guy is pretty impressive.”

Where that may come naturally to Longstreet, it’s been an adjustment for Maiava since stepping into the starting role. But teammates and coaches have noticed a major difference since last season.

“You certainly see him just more confident, more assertive as a leader and a player now,” Riley said. “That’s what we need him to be.”

Whether that’s enough to keep the job as USC’s quarterback, only time will tell.

Five-star freshman’s first impression

As Jahkeem Stewart made his way up the tunnel Tuesday for his first spring practice at USC, it was hard not to marvel at the hulking, 17-year old defensive end.

At 6 feet 6 and 290 pounds, Stewart should “no doubt” have an opportunity to contribute this season, Riley said. The question is how quickly he’ll be able to pick up USC’s defense.

“He’s in the facility darn near all day now,” Riley said. “He’s got the talent to [make an impact], and now it’s just going to be putting in the work and building him up to be a consistent enough player to trust to put him out there on Saturday.”

Etc.

Defensive end Anthony Lucas is expected to miss most of spring as he continues to recover from a lower leg injury that cost him the second half of last season.