LOS ANGELES — The USC football team was without its two starting safeties and some of the best players on the defensive side of the ball in Saturday’s game at Oregon: Bishop Fitzgerald and Kamari Ramsey.

Christian Pierce and Kennedy Urlacher started in their place for the Trojans (8-3 overall, 6-2 Big Ten). The former had nine total tackles and the latter had nine tackles (eight solo) and an interception.

“Regardless of who’s in the game, we always tell our guys the standard doesn’t change,” defensive coordinator D’Anton Lynn told reporters earlier this week. “And we give our backups a ton of reps in practice. We two-spot a lot, so when they go in games, we feel confident that they’re going to execute.”

The defense as a whole struggled to contain Oregon’s offense and the Ducks (10-1, 7-1) finished with 257 passing yards and 179 rushing yards. Head coach Lincoln Riley is optimistic about Pierce and Urlacher, however, based on their performances.

“They fought,” Riley said. “They’re two fighters. They tackle the ball. They’re violent. They’re contact seekers. A couple plays that we want back from a communication standpoint. But for both those guys in that moment, against a good offense like that — they both made a lot of plays.”

Fitzgerald, who leads the Big Ten Conference in interceptions, was listed as “out” on the official Big Ten pregame availability report. Ramsey was listed as “questionable.”

Fitzgerald left last weekend’s Iowa game just before halftime with an undisclosed injury and Ramsey left the game in the first quarter of that game after sustaining an injury while breaking up a pass.

Head coach Lincoln Riley declined to give a full health update on either — in addition to offensive lineman Elijah Paige, who also missed the game earlier in the week.

“They all did some things today, but we’ll get to the week,” Riley said. “See where they’re at. Address it on the injury report.”

USC suffered another blow when center Kilian O’Connor went down with an apparent lower-body injury at the 6:26 mark of the first quarter. It was his second injury this season.

Long snapper Hank Pepper, linebacker Eric Gentry, quarterback Jayden Maiava, receiver Asante Das, safety Christian Pierce and offensive lineman Tobias Raymond were all named captains against Oregon.

Maiava has been a game captain in every week except for one this season. He went into the game first in the conference and ninth out of all FBS quarterbacks in passing yards per game with 286.8.

Representatives from NFL teams, including the New York Jets, Baltimore Ravens, Minnesota Vikings, Dallas Cowboys, Cleveland Browns, New England Patriots, San Francisco 49ers and Pittsburgh Steelers were in attendance for Saturday afternoon’s game.

The Browns are slated to pick second and the Jets are third in the 2026 NFL Draft, which is set for April 23-25.