USC needs linebacker Easton Mascarenas-Arnold to keep playing ‘mean’ against Penn State

LOS ANGELES — Unfortunately, Easton Mascarenas-Arnold cannot quite pinpoint the moment he found out he was named after a baseball bat.

He knows, simply, it came as an homage from mother Toni, a former All-American and College World Series winner in her time playing softball at Arizona. Easton. The bat manufacturer. It was pure fate that Toni’s son would pick up a bat one day, too, his story written right there on his birth certificate.

The problem, however, was that Easton Mascarenas-Arnold did not like baseball.

He tried it. It was too slow. He tried basketball. It was too hard.

“The only sport I could really release my anger,” Mascarenas-Arnold smiled Wednesday, “was football.”

A few days ago, with USC deadlocked at 17-17 in the fourth quarter and momentum rapidly slipping to Minnesota, the linebacker roared ahead with the rest of the Trojans’ punt team and released his anger on one poor Golden Gopher. Minnesota’s Koi Perich caught the punt, traveled forward exactly 3 yards, and was promptly pile-driven by Mascarenas-Arnold.

Referees tossed a flag for unnecessary roughness. Mascarenas-Arnold, in the moment, jaunted right past it, roaring. Yellow flag. 15 yards. Didn’t matter.

“When I play good, I play mean,” Mascarenas-Arnold said, on Wednesday. “And I think I played really mean last game.”

Eventually, Minnesota buried USC under the ground on Saturday, running the ball 40 times for 193 yards. And as these Trojans look to regroup against a considerably more-potent Penn State attack on Saturday, they’ll need Mascarenas-Arnold to keep playing mean – penalties aside – as the former Mission Viejo High standout racked up a career-best 14 tackles against the Golden Gophers.

The senior had looked like USC’s most impactful transfer of the offseason, a first-team All-Pac-12 selection in 2023 with Oregon State who instantly took on a leadership role in coming back home to Southern California this winter. Suddenly, fellow linebackers Eric Gentry and Mason Cobb had shoulders lifted, Mascarenas-Arnold there as a true Mike-backer to relay pre-snap communication.

“Had a good aggressiveness about him early on, to be a part of the changes that we wanted to make and really embraced it,” head coach Lincoln Riley said of Mascarenas-Arnold earlier in the fall. “It’s his last run, and he’s a guy who’s kind of leaving it all out there, not just as a player, but as a leader as well.”

“You respect him.”

Through a few games, though, Gentry received much of the shine in a defensive overhaul under new coordinator D’Anton Lynn as Mascarenas-Arnold hardly looked imposing. He missed two tackles and struggled in coverage in a season-opening victory over LSU; he finished with just one solo tackle in the win against Wisconsin.

He took to this game at 6 years old, with no mind to baseball, with a coach screaming in his face. This has been in Mascarenas-Arnold’s nature, and stayed that way. He stands 6-foot, nothing on the height of, say, 6-6 Gentry; Mascarenas-Arnold’s motor and communication is his weapon.

“Sometimes, I do be mean,” Mascarenas-Arnold smiled, during USC’s preseason media day. “I be an (expletive) sometimes, in my language. I mean, it is what it is. It’s football.”

After the game against Wisconsin, he turned that inward. Internal conflict, he described Wednesday. Heading into Minnesota, with Gentry’s innate heat-seeking capabilities sidelined with injury, Mascarenas-Arnold challenged himself “a little bit more mentally,” he said.

“I think that wasn’t even my best performance,” Mascarenas-Arnold said, reflecting on a career-best tackle count. “It was better, but it wasn’t still my best. I think this week, I’ve been working really hard, trying to get to the ball.”

USC (3-2 overall, 1-2 Big Ten) needs his best, desperately, against fourth-ranked Penn State (5-0, 2-0). Gentry, who was in street clothes at practice again Tuesday and Wednesday, is out indefinitely. Redshirt junior Anthony Beavers Jr., who started the first game at linebacker of his college career on Saturday, has been working in Gentry’s spot. And Penn State boasts one of the more potent rushing attacks in the country, ranked 18th in the nation in yards-per-game and averaging 5.4 yards per carry.

“I think this week,” Mascarenas-Arnold said Wednesday, “is gonna be a good one for me.”