How USC RB Woody Marks has become the heartbeat of the Trojans’ offense

LOS ANGELES – If the Pirate loved you, he would spare no praise. If the pirate loved you, he would walk past you in the hallways of his football facility and call you stud farm. An absolute winner. It was a broken record. You’re just a stud.

If the pirate loved you, that usually meant you were tough. Mike Leach’s programs, at Texas Tech and Washington State and Mississippi State before his death at age 61, were built on toughness. About tough people. He moved towards them.

And Leach once called running back Jo’Quavious “Woody” Marks — as former Mississippi State running backs coach Eric Mele recalled — “tougher than leather boots.”

In a game against Alabama during Marks’ junior season, as former Mississippi State offensive line coach Mason Miller recalled, Marks blew up a rusher who was blocking after a corner blitz. Mississippi State called a timeout. Marks returned to the group and took off his helmet.

Miller did a double take.

“What’s wrong with your nose?” Miller asked him because the child’s nose was crooked.

“I think I broke it,” Marks replied.

He was right. He put cotton swabs in his nostrils and played the rest of the game.

“Mike always liked tough people,” Miller said. “Tough people do hard things. And I think Woody really embraced that.

For four years at Mississippi State, Woody Marks did that difficult things even if they were things he never quite expected. A highly recruited running back from Atlanta, Georgia, he committed to the Bulldogs in 2019 due to then-head coach Joe Moorhead’s run-heavy offense; a few months later Moorhead was canned and replaced by Leach and an air raid plan in which transfers were a side issue.

Marks, a boy who always composed his sentences in as few words as possible, didn’t complain. He stayed. He ran a little. He blocked a lot. He caught the most passes – as a running back – of anyone in Mississippi State history.

And when the time came in the offseason to find a new program, wanting to prove he could be a true workhorse in his final year of college eligibility, Marks was drawn to USC and Lincoln Riley – a Leach disciple in a program that was healthy with Leach disciples. General manager Dave Emerick worked at Marks at Mississippi State for more than two years. This also applies to Director of Player Engagement Brittany Thackery.

“I think the fact that we got that,” Riley said Thursday, “gave us even more assurance that he was the right guy.”

Marks has rewarded the faith, and then some, just a few games into his USC career. As Big Ten defenses have at times grounded Riley’s evolved aerial attack with soft-zone coverage, the former Mississippi State defender has become the heartbeat of USC’s offense. The stats have been loud, with 468 yards on 5.8 yards per carry. The boot leather The harshness has become louder.

A few weeks ago in Ann Arbor, when USC trailed Michigan by 10 points in the third quarter, quarterback Miller Moss was sacked and stripped. Michigan defensive lineman Kenneth Grant, riding in all his 6-foot-4, 339-pound glory, scooped up the loose ball and charged onto the field as Marks turned and gave chase.

In one fell swoop, Marks, a head shorter and half a man shorter, hit Grant directly in the arms and yanked the ball away as he tumbled to the turf.

“One of the best single-player efforts,” Moss said a few days later, “I’ve ever seen in an individual game.”

Somehow it would have definitely made the Pirate smile.

‘Once in a lifetime kind’

Tameka Marks’ son was born with a small tuft of hair resting tightly on the crown of his head, and she thought to herself that her baby looked like a little woodpecker.

When he was older, Marks became fascinated with “Toy Story” and Tameka bought her son a Woody cowboy costume. He wanted to wear it to school. Every day. She let him, until the months passed and the fabric became so thin he could barely reach over his knees.

Jo’Quavious was difficult to remember, and difficult to pronounce anyway. When he was six years old, Marks had an asthma attack and Tameka took him to the hospital. When her mother arrived later, she suddenly realized that she could not remember her grandson’s birth name to see him.

Well, his name is Woodyshe tried to explain to the hospital staff. Woody Marks.

It was a name of blissful childhood innocence – pronounced “Woo-dee,” with a Southern twist – born in one of Atlanta’s most dangerous neighborhoods. Lakewood Heights was, as Marks’ former Carver High assistant Quinton Wesley put it, “one of those areas you can’t get out of.”

Sirens sounded every night. Gunshots were fired every night. Drugs were traded every night. One of Marks’ former high school friends, who had Wesley as a student, recently posted a congratulatory message on social media for Marks getting out of jail with a contraband phone, as Wesley described.

“He’s a once-in-a-lifetime kid, to be honest with you,” Wesley said of Marks. ‘You know what I mean? He has overcome a lot.”

Tameka raised her three children, Marks the youngest, the way she was raised. Respect your elders, she told them. Respect everyone, regardless of whether they respect you. Go to school. Do as you’re told. Come home and take care of your family.

He has always been all business, his coaches say. His problems lay elsewhere when he was growing up. That hospitalization for asthma when he was six was not unique. Marks had two inhalers growing up, which left him prone to strained breathing anytime he was just sitting, and he was severely allergic to about six different types of grass.

And yet, for some reason, Marks has never had a problem touching a football field. To this day, doctors have never found out what caused his asthma.

“I was like, ‘Okay, so I mean,’” Tameka recalls, “this is your profession.”

As Marks grew into a four-star runner at Carver High in Atlanta, his mother brought food for his team every Friday night. Once, she spent a week in the hospital with illness, was discharged on a Friday, and that same evening she lay shivering on the bleachers under a pile of blankets. Tameka hasn’t missed her son’s games.

“He had a reason from day one,” Wesley said. “He had a goal from day one.”

A few years into his time at Mississippi State, Marks had gained 20 pounds, becoming a workhorse in a complementary back role. And soon, running backs coach Mele decided on a new name alongside Woody.

“I thought, ‘We’ve got to get rid of that,’” Mele recalls, “and start calling him Iron Man.”

A Midnight Marauder turned Trojan

The Mississippi State offseasons were known for a late-night training program that Leach called “Midnight Marauders.”

At the end of each session, Leach called up individual players and presented them with t-shirts according to a rating system. Players who “threw a punch,” as Mele put it, received a black T-shirt. Players who were decent were given a gray shirt. Players who hesitated received a pink T-shirt in size small.

From his very first Midnight Marauders practices, Marks was a man in a black T-shirt.

In high school, Tameka and Marks made the four-hour drive from Atlanta to Mississippi State more than a dozen times, because she told her son he would stay wherever he wanted to go. And the two conducted extensive research into Leach’s offense after the legendary head coach was named Morehead’s replacement in January 2020. Marks was committed to Mississippi State for the overall program. And so he stayed.

“He can be so loyal,” Wesley thought, “to the point that it hurts him.”

He never received more than 121 carries in a single season. Marks could have left Mississippi a long time ago, like Wesley said. But Leach loved him, and Marks was determined to complete his degree as he grew as a pass-catcher, only deciding to move on after a tumultuous 2023 season following Leach’s death in December 2022.

After initially wanting to enter the NFL Draft, Marks decided to use a senior year to gain eligibility. The goal: prove to everyone, as Carver High head coach Darren Myles said, he could be a true lead back. And after evaluating several schools in the transfer portal – Georgia, Washington, Ohio State – Marks was drawn to USC.

Then-running backs coach Kiel McDonald was on his way out the door, about to take a job under Jim Harbaugh with the NFL’s Chargers. But as a kind of final gift to USC, McDonald visited Marks about five times while he was in the portal and pitched to him that he could fill a role similar to former Oklahoma back Joe Mixon: a versatile rush-and-pass catching threat. in Riley’s early Sooners offenses.