Lincoln Riley breaks down USC's 'incredibly disappointing' night against Notre Dame

Following a blowout loss at Note Dame, USC head coach Lincoln Riley admitted the team was extremely disappointed with their performance.

Caleb Williams had perhaps the worst game of his career, throwing for 199 yards and and three interceptions to just one touchdown, which meant a tough overall day for the offense and a season-low 20 points, which is less than half of their next-lowest output in 2023. Defensively, the Trojans gave up a season-high as well, 48 points. That’s also their third straight game allowing 40+.

In his opening statement during the postgame presser, Lincoln Riley was blunt in his assessment of the evening.

“Alright, yeah, incredibly disappointing night,” Riley said to start. “Just didn’t play good enough to win the game here on the road in a rivalry game against a good opponent. I mean, that’s the simple matter.”

Specifically, the turnovers and the game-changing special teams play by the Fighting Irish were difference-makers.

“I mean, the obvious thing is you lose the turnover battle five to nothing and you give up a kickoff return for a touchdown. You have a penalty that takes a touchdown off the board, a number of negative plays. That’s the name of the game right there.”

Despite the large number of points given up once again, Lincoln Riley actually took up for his defense, noting that the offense and special teams unit kept putting pressure them all night.

“I mean, I had seen the final stats, I think they had like 250, maybe 260 yards of offense. Thought our defense played good enough to win the football game, thought we stepped up and did a lot of great things there. But we just put our defense in some some terrible positions.”

Overall, though, the USC head coach definitely had his head down after that loss in a big spotlight.

“So, yeah, obviously, we’re really disappointed. It’s a disappointed locker room. It’s disappointed, certainly not defeated, not demoralized. I know that we’ve obviously got a lot in front of us, but this game means a lot. We know it means a lot to to our fan base. It means a lot to college football and and certainly disappointed that we weren’t able to play nearly good enough football to win tonight.”

USC got down early but did start strong in the second half with a nice comeback effort. There’s no guarantee the Trojans would have pulled themselves back into the game, but Riley says the kickoff return erased any chances.

“I thought the team had great resolve at halftime. So, very much believed at halftime that we were going to win the football game. Came out and got got a couple of stops, got the one touchdown in and and fell like, up until the the kickoff return for a touchdown, that we were right there. And then, the kickoff return was the back-breaker there at the end of the game.”

Lastly, Lincoln Riley assured fans, saying: “So, still very much believe in this football team 100%.”