For years, Jayden Maiava’s pride has lingered an ocean away, heartstrings tugged back to his second home nestled at the foot of the south stretch of the Ko’olau mountain range on O’ahu.
He was raised there, in part, in Palolo Valley, in a wide stretch of state-funded housing projects well-known to Honolulu natives. Maiava’s uncle David Tautofi grew up there, too, in that community where all the units looked the same, families hanging on by government paychecks and gangs and drugs and alcohol flowed rampant.
But the kids like Maiava never saw the problems, or heard the stigma that dripped off the word Palolo. They saw the beaches of Waikiki, the beauty of Ko’olau. They saw their friends, and family, and love, Maiava growing up with seven siblings. Life was simple, long before it twisted into something much more complex, and Maiava was a talkative boy free of spirit.
He is a different presence now, as a young man at USC. Little braggadocio arrived with Maiava when the quarterback transferred from UNLV in the winter, into a program that was already Miller Moss’ to lose. He spoke little publicly, with little margin for error. Slow to talk. Quick to listen.
“Taking it all in,” uncle Tautofi described in the spring, “as much as he can.”
There has been much to take in, more change in Maiava’s formative years than in many people’s lifetimes. He was tugged away from Palolo to move to Las Vegas, and then brought back to Hawaii, and then yanked back to Vegas, and then he nearly wound up in Georgia. And Tautofi and others are readily aware it’s tainted his reputation, the rotating carousel of stops clinging to a raw but talented quarterback’s name.
But Maiava never, really, asked for any of it. Certainly, he never asked to move from Palolo, where his heart lay. And when he changed his mind on Georgia and picked USC in the portal — picked Lincoln Riley, really — Tautofi saw it as the first time his nephew had truly taken his future into his own hands.
Any surface-level label of malcontent has been shed, readily, in Maiava’s few months at USC, the program’s potential future at quarterback shining through. As USC beat the brakes off Utah State, 48-0, Saturday night, backup Maiava seized his opportunity to shine in fourth-quarter snaps — completing an off-platform 22-yard strike and darting and weaving for a 7-yard rushing touchdown, looking eerily reminiscent of a certain Heisman winner who just won his first game with the Chicago Bears Sunday.
He smiled softly postgame, as Saturday night turned to Sunday morning, nodding a “most-definitely” that he’d found home again at USC.
“Jayden, you’re there now,” Tautofi told his nephew in the winter. “You’re no longer chasing anything. You’re no longer looking for something, searching.”
“You’re here.”
Hawaii to Vegas
Even the decision to become a quarterback was made for him.
Maiava carries a slightly unusual frame for a quarterback, a broad-shouldered kid who stands 6-foot-4 and 220 pounds, and he grew up playing youth ball for a Tautofi-coached team in Oahu splitting time at tight end and offensive lineman. He’d never much thrown a ball before, really, until Tautofi decided to try him at quarterback entering his middle-school years.
He was just getting adjusted when Maiava’s mother, one day, called Tautofi and dropped a bombshell: The family was moving to Las Vegas.
It wasn’t a want so much, really, as a need. Housing prices have grown, exponentially, in Hawaii, a trend that has increasingly driven locals off the island and toward Vegas in a near-exodus — a city Tautofi called the “ninth island” due to Nevada’s lack of state income tax. Maiava’s parents, as Tautofi said, did whatever they could to make ends meet, but raising eight children came with a considerable price.
“As much as he wanted to stay,” Tautofi said, “it was a shocker for him. So he went through a traumatic experience.”
He struggled to adjust. He struggled in school, playing his freshman year of ball at Sierra Vista High in Vegas. So before Maiava’s sophomore year, Tautofi flew out to Vegas, had a conversation with Maiava and his mother, and they decided he should head back to Hawaii for his sophomore season to play for Kaimuki High in Honolulu, where Tautofi was the head coach.
And then COVID-19 hit, and sports shut down for an entire season in Hawaii, and Maiava went back to Vegas to play football.
“I’ve been a lot,” Maiava reflected this fall, “back-and-forth.”
He acted with such indecision that summer before his junior year, Tautofi remembered, that his family nearly ran out of time to pick a program in Vegas before a new season dawned. He felt out Desert Pines, a public stalwart in Vegas. He felt out Bishop Gorman, a private powerhouse. He wound up at Liberty High for his final two seasons.
That rocky process, Tautofi reflected, ruffled feathers around Maiava’s college recruitment. Schools dropped off the map, and Maiava was set to commit to UNLV — until the night before his signing day. Auburn called, a school that had barely been in touch with Maiava. The offer still stood, they made clear to him. Maiava wanted to sign.
His parents, Liberty coach Richard Muraco said, shut that down.
“You can always look back and question things, but I think that he — Jayden didn’t really have a lot of say,” Muraco said.
Seizing his future
One night in early January, shortly after news broke that Maiava had committed to Georgia out of the transfer portal, Tautofi got a call from his nephew.
He was heavy-hearted, Tautofi remembered. He was being pursued hard by USC, too, and he hadn’t actually wanted to commit to the Bulldogs, as father William reflected back in the winter. His father was high on them, and he simply hadn’t told him no.
There were conversations in Maiava’s recruitment, from both USC and Georgia, around what his NIL payments could look like through university-supporting collectives. And for a kid who grew up in state housing, for a kid with seven siblings, the opportunity to help his family was enticing, as Tautofi reflected. Georgia offered more flash, from that standpoint.
But by the next morning, Maiava’s heart was set on USC. He wanted to play under Riley, he reflected in the spring, a head coach with a glimmering record of quarterback development. And his flip caused shockwaves across college football, one of the strangest will-he-won’t-he sagas of the offseason portal.
The thought was simple, at the end of the day, Tautofi reflected. If I don’t do something now, my career’s done.
“I think for the first time, it exemplified him — ‘You know what, I gotta do what I gotta do for me,’” Tautofi said. “And he made that decision. And even though it ruffled feathers, and it didn’t look good to the public eye, for him it was a victory.”
Maiava, Muraco emphasized, is no prima-donna. The transfers have stacked up, sure: but each decision has been readily explainable, a much more complex background beneath the surface. He came into USC, Tautofi said, understanding he simply needed to perform, and drew a bevy of praise in the spring and fall for his steadily improving grasp of Riley’s offense.
After Moss affirmed Maiava had pushed him hard in the fall, Riley nonetheless came to Maiava and in late August delivered the news that he was giving Moss the starting job.
“I was like, ‘Hey, by all means,’” Maiava recalled after the Utah State win. “So … me and Miller, we all got one thing in common, and that’s just putting the team in the best position to win games.”
He shone in his command and leadership in late snaps against the Aggies, justifying Riley’s expressed confidence in his ability to step in if Moss misses time. And after five-star Malachi Nelson left in the offseason for Boise State, Maiava could well step into his place as Riley’s next quarterback heir behind Moss .
“He’s got a bright future here,” Riley said in the fall. “No doubt about it.”
