With Brown back and healthy at quarterback, USF seeks to boost record from 7-6

TAMPA, Fla. — When USF kicks off its football season at 5:30 p.m. Thursday against preseason Associated Press Top 25 Boise State, the Bulls are confident because senior quarterback Byrum Brown is back. 

Brown missed eight games last season with an injury to his lower left leg in a loss to Tulane in late September. He took some limited snaps after that, including in the Hawai’i Bowl, but could not play significant time.

In 2023, Brown completed 276 of 427 pass attempts for 3,292 yards and 26 touchdowns and also ran for 809 yards, one of the best performances in all of college’s Football Bowl Subdivision.

He should get strong protection from the Bulls’ veteran offensive line.

“I challenged the older guys to grab the young guys and show them what it looks like to get ready for a game,” coach Alex Golesh said. “The biggest challenge is stay completely focused on the task at hand, which is just going one day at a time as we get closer to playing.”

He also could get help from a new running back. USF used the transfer portal to bring in senior Cartevious Norton from Charlotte, where he rushed for 525 yards and seven touchdowns in one season after joining the Broncos from Iowa State.

Junior wide receiver Keshaun Singleton is back after ranking third on the team with 27 receptions for 408 yards and three touchdowns in his first season, and so is junior Jeyquan Smith, who played in all 13 games last season and caught six passes for 106 yards. Graduate student Mudia Reuben out of Stanford also was added through the transfer portal.

The Bulls are looking to improve upon last season, when they finished 7-6 after a 41-39 victory against San Diego State at the Hawai’i Bowl. It was the second season in a row that the Bulls finished with that record under Golesh.

“We’ve talked so much this offseason about our identity, now going into year 3, and going into a veteran football team,” Golesh said. “It’s time that we put this identity that we have preached and preached and preached and preached and worked and lived for 2-1/2 years. It’s time we put it on display for the entire country to see. That means we’re physically and mentally the toughest football team on that field, week in and week out.”

The coach said better health heading into the season should help, too.

 “I’m excited, we’re in a good spot as a team,” Golesh said. “We are getting healthy off of camp. This was a huge, huge week for us to get a bunch of guys healthy back, a bunch of guys back to the weights they’re supposed to be, kind of out of the true grind of what camp is into the true grind of what the season is.”