The drill is simple. Just a basic throw-and-catch warm-up, called “Pat-and-Go,” that USC and many other football programs do virtually every day. Quarterbacks loosen their arms, while pass catchers get their legs warm, running routes on air. It’s the sort of drill where it’s easy enough to slough off a rep or two. Or to get a little casual, like playing catch in the yard.
But when Makai Lemon lines up during Pat-and-Go, there is nothing casual about what comes next. Every rep is taken seriously, every reception reeled in with intention. The junior has taken thousands of these reps, caught thousands of these passes over three seasons at USC, each filed away as a data point for Lemon to later access.
“I don’t know that I’ve ever seen one he didn’t catch game-like,” USC coach Lincoln Riley says. “Rarely does he ever take a rep that isn’t very intentional.”
It’s a fitting snapshot of the Trojans’ top receiver, one that captures more than just his prowess as a football player. Every action with Lemon is deliberate, every detail accounted for. That singular focus has made him the most reliable receiver in college football and, come April, a surefire first-round NFL draft pick, all while somehow maintaining a strikingly low profile for a pass catcher of his caliber.
The truth is, as a natural introvert, Lemon prefers it that way. Head down, eyes ahead, mind fixed first on getting USC to the College Football Playoff before making the leap to the NFL, every move along the way meant to help meet that end. The work, in time, will speak for itself.
Those who know him best will tell you that’s how Lemon has always operated. Even before he could pick up a football, his family insists, his focus was unusually singular. When he took an interest in skateboarding at 3 years old, for instance, his parents hadn’t expected their toddler would be doing tricks before his next birthday.
“He just always amazed us,” his mother, Brandy Lemon, said. “Like, ‘Oh my gosh, there’s no way our 3-year old son is really doing kickflips and ollies right now.’”
Makai approached most of his interests as a child with a similar intensity. One day, at 6, he decided he was going to catch a fish, despite having never done so. He wanted to do it entirely on his own, too, without the help of his father, Mike. So Mike watched with amusement as Makai cast out his line.
He didn’t believe it when Makai said he got a bite.
“But he reeled it in, caught it, did it all himself,” Mike recalls. “And I’m like, ‘Holy moly, you caught your first fish, son.’”
Lemon came to prefer independence. He was the baby in the family, after all. His sister was five years older. His younger cousins wouldn’t be born until later. Most of his early childhood was spent hanging around adults — throwing around a football with his uncles or trying to keep up with his dad lifting weights. His family called him “an old soul” because of how often he acted older than his age. At USC, at least one football staff member just calls him “the old man.”
“It comes from being around a lot of family, a lot of older uncles and aunties,” Lemon said. “I feel like it stuck with me.”
Young Makai expected other kids to meet the same standard. Once, after a youth baseball game, he confessed his frustration to his mom that his teammates weren’t taking their coach’s post-game comments as seriously as he was.
He was 7.
“He was mad that he was the only one paying attention,” Brandy Lemon said. “‘He was like, ‘Mom, in the dugout, all the kids are climbing the fence. Nobody cares.’
“And I’m like, ‘Son, you’re only 7. It’s ok! They’re still learning.’ But he wasn’t satisfied.”
He zeroed in on football in middle school, setting aside most other interests. His parents, to this day, still question whether he’s ever sat through a full movie because his mind always drifted to football.
“Nothing brought the joy, the passion, the physicality like football,” Makai explains.
Sometimes they would find him in the backyard, practicing routes alone. And the older he got, the more serious he became.
As a freshman at La Mirada High, Lemon made an impact on both sides of the ball — as a receiver and cornerback. Then, as a sophomore, he stepped right away into a similar dual role at Los Alamitos, a much bigger high school where the coach, Ray Fenton, wondered if Lemon might be a carbon copy of another USC receiver, Amon-ra St. Brown.
“The reaction time, the way he’s able to change direction, the speed with which he accelerates, it’s different,” Fenton said. “A lot of great athletes can be explosive when they run and you see their burst, but [Lemon’s] ability to stop and start or change direction laterally, it’s like watching him in fast forward, while you’re seeing the play in real time.”
Often, Fenton says, Los Alamitos would simply throw him the ball on the perimeter and let him do the rest. Lemon could slip past tacklers with his speed — or just as easily plow right through them. It didn’t matter that defenses knew he was coming.
USC would see his potential early, offering Lemon back in March 2020, under previous coach Clay Helton. But Lemon hit it off most with Riley, who was at Oklahoma. Lemon said at the time that he knew on his plane ride home that he was committing to the Sooners.
That Riley later took the job at USC only made the fit feel more serendipitous.
It wouldn’t always feel that way as a freshman. Buried in the pecking order at receiver, coaches requested Lemon move to cornerback for depth purposes. He obliged, throwing all of his focus into being the best possible defensive back, but he had no interest in staying there long term.
Lemon ensured that there was no need to worry. Despite entering the next season with the least expectations among USC’s quartet of sophomore wideouts, he emerged by mid-October as the most trusted of options in the Trojans’ passing attack.
The two most touted receiver among the four, Duce Robinson and Zachariah Branch, left during the offseason in search of other opportunities. For a time, it wasn’t clear whether Ja’Kobi Lane would follow them.
But for Lemon, there was never any wavering on his future at USC. His parents had long before hammered home the notion that the grass wasn’t always greener. The reasons he first trusted Riley in 2021 still applied. He had no interest in starting a bidding war with USC or holding out for a bigger name, image and likeness deal elsewhere, even though those offers would have been readily available.
“I wanted to be here,” Lemon said. “My family is right up the street. I’m the most comfortable here. I banked on my ability. I knew the circumstances that were ahead of me. When the opportunity presented itself, I tried to take full advantage of it.”
To say Lemon has fulfilled that expectation would be an understatement.
Through seven games this season, he’s averaging 97 receiving yards, a per-game pace that trails just behind Michael Pittman Jr. among Trojan wideouts over the past decade.
Pro Football Focus has Lemon graded as the highest-performing receiver in the Big Ten this season, and draft analysts have taken notice, almost universally slotting him in somewhere in the first round of early mock drafts. One clip of his acrobatic touchdown grab in traffic USC’s win over Michigan should explain his rise.
But in Lemon’s mind, as USC faces Northwestern on Friday night, none of that has changed anything. His eyes are still ahead, his focus still trained on the same horizon, even as the NFL dream he so long envisioned draws closer.
“He’s been the same guy throughout it all,” Riley said. “He just stays singularly focused. That’s why he’s turned into the player that has.”
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