The new Rivals250 rankings for the 2026 class came out Monday, just as this pivotal recruiting month begins with June official visits.
Some schools got started with big visitor lists last weekend, while USC starts rolling out the welcome mat this week with a mid-week visit from four-star safety Jett Washington and then a big group of commits and some uncommitted targets over the weekend.
To cover all those matters, we checked in with Rivals national recruiting director Adam Gorney for his thoughts on a few Trojans' in the rankings and what remains for this USC recruiting class.
RELATED: See where USC's commits landed in the new 2026 Rivals250 rankings
1. What led to new USC commit Mark Bowman getting the bump to five-star status and taking over as the No. 1-ranked TE in this class?
Adam Gorney: "I've been pushing Mark Bowman as the best tight end in this class for a long time. I think he's really, really special and unique sort of to the NFL game. As [Oregon commit] Kendre' Harrison might look better, he hasn't been on a football field in a very long time, and Mark Bowman will go anywhere and compete against everybody and do everything. So, if you look at NFL draft trends, at least one tight end is going in the first round every year, so we felt we needed at least one five-star tight end. We felt Bowman definitely deserved it, and that's what pushed him up to the top."
2. What has USC RB commit Deshonne Redeaux shown you to earn his spot in the Rivals250 rankings in this new update?
Gorney: "I was a little slow on Redeaux, and I don't really know why. He had a big junior season. I saw that team when they were all sophomores, when Davon Benjamin and Redeaux were sophomores, and he was good but not great. But he was a sophomore too. Last year, he rushed for over 1,000 yards. And then I saw him at the Under Armour camp and he can just turn up the speed to like a level of whatever he wants to do, basically. He was running by everybody at that camp, which isn't necessarily the hardest thing to do in a camp setting against linebackers, but you can just tell he can get to another level whenever he needed it. And so, I thought with that, he put over 1,000 yards as a junior, his speed and his all-purpose capabilities, I just kind of thought that he deserved a bump in the rankings. He'll be at the Rivals Five-Star this summer. He's not going to blow you away with being the most rocked-up, jacked running back of all time. In the NFL, those guys are super important, but so are the guys that can run it but also kind of split out and catch passes and do a lot of things in space, and that's where I think he brings a lot of special qualities."
