At 6-7 and 390 pounds, D-line convert Max Gibbs may be USCs biggest and best success story of a l -

LOS ANGELES — On USC’s official roster, true freshman Max Gibbs is listed at 6-foot-7, 390 pounds. And Kelly Garmon, the Los Angeles area youth football coach better known as “Coach K-Mac,” is certain that somewhere within that massive frame is an explosive athlete waiting to break free.

“When he came in his eighth-grade year, he wanted to be a wide receiver,” said Garmon, who coached Gibbs for several years in the Snoop Youth Football League. “That’s f—— funny, ain’t it? He came in and told me, ‘I’m tired of being a lineman.’ Max has a wide receiver or running back in that big body that y’all looking at. He kept asking me this s—. I said, ‘You know what? Get over there in that receiver line, they’re doing the receiver tree.’ He got through the easy-ups and I think a slant, and said I’m going back over there with the linemen. He had a sprint trainer at one time. That’s my boy. I’m like, ‘When are you going to sprint?’ He’s a great kid. I love Max. I swear I do.”

That first attempt at a position switch was a failure, but Gibbs’ position change five years later during his first season of college football has gone better than he and the Trojans could have possibly expected.

In less than two months, Gibbs has gone from a reserve offensive guard who didn’t travel with the team for its first road trip of the season to an actual contributor on the defensive line and, shockingly, one of the true freshmen USC has counted on the most this season.

The focus of USC’s season shifted from on-field results to the coaching search almost immediately after Clay Helton was fired two months ago. The primary remaining driver of on-field interest — standout receiver Drake London — was wiped off the board when London fractured his ankle against Arizona three weeks ago. So entering the 4-5 Trojans’ crosstown rivalry game against UCLA on Saturday, there are few remaining sources of on-field intrigue. Gibbs is one of the few exceptions.

“He feels good about it. We feel good about it,” USC defensive coordinator Todd Orlando said earlier this week. “We were probably about 75 percent sure that this would work, but now he’s made us a true believer, so that’s a really cool part about it.”

Jason Mitchell, a receiver on USC’s 2004 national championship team, put in a call to Garmon to say he had a player for him. So Garmon asked Mitchell to take a photo with the kid and text it to him.

“As soon as that picture came through,” Garmon said, “I was like, where’s he at?”

Gibbs spent the early portion of his life with his mother Tamika Williams in Philadelphia before they moved to California. He played baseball and took martial arts classes, but his football journey began at 11 in the Snoop Youth Football League with Garmon and Snoop Dogg.

When Gibbs joined the SYFL, he was already taller than Garmon. His size actually kept him from playing earlier — the SYFL’s lack of weight restrictions allowed Gibbs to join the league. Garmon knew Gibbs just needed to play.

Netflix documented Gibbs’ final season in the SYFL in its series “Coach Snoop,” which followed Snoop Dogg, Garmon, Gibbs and his teammates, including fellow USC freshmen Jaylin Smith and Anthony Beavers Jr.

Gibbs and his mother were featured throughout the show. Williams says the SYFL helped make Gibbs a tougher person; the show portrays Gibbs as a teenager still searching for his confidence and adjusting to tough coaching. It also emphasized the stark contrast between Williams’ parenting style (caring, loving, protective) and Garmon’s coaching style (caring but with extremely tough love, to put it mildly).

“I guess at some point Snoop Dogg felt I was a little overprotective and maybe a helicopter mom,” Williams said. “I just had to let him know I’m Max’s mom and dad. It’s literally always been him and I his whole life. Even though you can be a giant or be a really big kid, you’ll still have people who want to tease you or bully you.”

“She’s super protective,” Garmon said. “But you know, we’re like family now. She used to be out there like, ‘You don’t have to cuss like that.’ I’d tell her, ‘You can go to your car.’ It started off like that. To where we are now, that’s funny. She just began to trust us and she saw how we loved her son and he loved us back. We’ve got an understanding.”

The mere mention of Gibbs tends to naturally draw smiles from his current teammates. The freshman is so soft-spoken it was hard to hear him when he talked with reporters earlier this week. When he was younger, he was probably too gentle of a giant.

“He used to be so damn nice, I used to get pissed off,” Garmon said. “He used to be waving at people, I’d be like, ‘Hey, man, don’t wave at nobody anymore.’ He’s just a great dude. Then he went too crazy one year and got too mean and was fighting everybody. I was just like, ‘Bro, you have to find a happy medium. They respect you now, brother, you don’t have to go overboard. Between the whistle, kick they ass and then off the field be a great guy.’”

Gibbs eventually found that happy medium at St. John Bosco, where he started at guard on the Braves’ 2019 team that was crowned mythical national champions. He entered the 2021 recruiting cycle as a three-star offensive lineman, but there weren’t many questions about Gibbs’ potential. Georgia and Arkansas were among the other programs who offered.

“That was like the best place for him to go play high school football,” Garmon said. “If he went to some smaller division schools, he would’ve had to play immediately as a ninth grader, but he had the chance to grow mentally and physically at Bosco.”

Gibbs was still raw, though, and he had plenty of weight to lose, especially when the pandemic limited how much he could actually work out. But in April 2020, he committed to USC, opting to stay close to home and his mother.

Gibbs enrolled at USC this past summer and earned praise from people in the program for his work ethic. He had some good spurts during training camp, but expectations were modest for his first year on campus.

“Just get better as a player, as a person,” he said. “Just get better and get more experience.”

“I just really expected for him to be redshirted, honestly,” Williams said. “They usually redshirt freshmen, so we were kind of expecting that, and a lot of the parents told me it’s not a bad thing, it’s kind of a good thing. We were expecting the regular freshman thing. And we actually got it — with a little twist.”

Williams sat on her sofa in shock in late September when Gibbs told her the USC coaching staff wanted to move him to defensive line, where the Trojans lacked depth on the interior. She was a bit hesitant and called Garmon to talk about it.

“I didn’t care because he wanted to play,” Garmon said. “He was so pissed and hurt when they left that time and he didn’t travel with the team (to Washington State). Oh my gosh. He never experienced that before, so he didn’t care. He’ll play anywhere. He didn’t want to get left anymore.

“He couldn’t believe it. I was like, ‘Hey, y’all. He’s a freshman punk.’ He didn’t want to talk to me. Nobody cares about leaving no freshman. You know, I don’t want to hear any whining. Like, ‘Dude, you go to practice every day, right? OK, do something. Every day you get another opportunity to do something.’”

USC interim coach Donte Williams initially expressed confidence about Gibbs’ move, but USC’s significant attrition on the defensive line necessitated it. In the spring, projected starter Brandon Pili ruptured his Achilles, which knocked him out for the year. In May, four-star freshman Jay Toia, who enrolled in January and participated in spring practice, transferred to UCLA after appearing in line for playing time with the Trojans. Alabama transfer Ishmael Sopsher recovered slowly from a leg surgery he had in the spring. Redshirt freshman Kobe Pepe could’ve been an option at the position, but he was in and out of health and safety protocols and suffered a shoulder injury which kept him out of the lineup.

So in the season opener against San Jose State, USC started 275-pound Stanley Ta’ufo’ou at nose tackle. It took only a few weeks before opponents exploited the Trojans’ lack of size up front. That brought Gibbs over to the defensive line.

“It was an easy decision,” said offensive line coach Clay McGuire. “This is what the team needs. There was no fight on it, no kind of fall back or anything.”

“I had to step up to the plate,” Gibbs said. “and just work hard at it and get better at it.”

Gibbs made his debut on the defensive line against Colorado. The plan was for Gibbs to provide some size up front for a few plays against the run. Gibbs said he weighs 380 pounds now — and that’s after dropping a bunch of weight since he arrived on campus — so stamina was always going to be a question. He only played one play against Colorado and the following week against Utah. He played 13 against Arizona, then recorded double-digit snaps against Arizona State and even recorded a tackle for loss, one of two tackles he’s made this season. Now his role is growing.

“Max was a guy who we thought could just fill up gaps and be a bigger body and be stout,” Orlando said. “Now he’s starting to play full time for us, and he’s starting to figure things out. He’s not a finished product at all, but if you think about like three months ago, he was an offensive lineman we just kind of thought a little, ‘Hey, we need him, we’re not going to play him a lot, maybe five or six plays.’ Then all of a sudden we look at him and he’s playing 15. Now he’s playing 17, making tackles and it’s like, “You know what, this could really work out.’ I think you’re seeing him start to figure things out, you’re starting to see him give us some size. That’s what we need more than anything else, not getting pushed around inside. He’s done that consistently. Now we’re doing some stuff schematically with him where we’re starting to move him around and he’s picking that up. That’s always the hardest thing. Anybody can sit on top of a center and beat him up, but we ask him to do some things we want to do pressure-wise or movement-wise and he’s able to do it, which is good.”

In a season when there has been reason to question the engagement of USC players who lost their head coach in Week 2 and are playing for a lame-duck staff, Gibbs is one of the few examples of a player making steady progress over time.

“Max is one dude who I can say is truly buying into the process,” said corner Chris Steele, who played with Gibbs at St. John Bosco. “He’s cut down so much weight since he’s been here. I’ve known him since his freshman year of high school. Just to see his development and the way he’s turning into a man is crazy to me. He moves very well for somebody his size, and I think he’s going to end up being a big-time D-lineman once he gets everything together.”

That’s the main question moving forward: Where is Gibbs’ future on the field? Steele said defensive line. Garmon believes it’s on the offensive line. Gibbs said he’ll play wherever he fits best.

“The sky’s still the limit for him,” interim head coach Donte Williams said. “Just for the simple fact the (better) shape he gets in and the (additional) weight loss, the better he will become. So it’s the best to come for Max Gibbs.”

(Photo: Brian Rothmuller / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

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