Lincoln Riley denies need for change following Washington loss: 'It's not like we're getting our ass kicked'

Things didn’t get any easier for Lincoln Riley and the USC Trojans on Saturday night, as they lost to the Washington Huskies 26-21, dropping them to 4-5 overall on the 2024 campaign. It’s been a frustrating year for Riley and his team. And the Trojans head coach noted as much in his postgame press conference.

“I don’t handle losing very well. It hasn’t happened very much in my career. That part of it is unacceptable,” Riley said in his postgame press conference.

Riley denied the need for any sort of changes to be made.

When the USC head football coach was asked about the changes he could make to get the team back on track, Riley knows his team has been incredibly close in several games this season.

“It’s not like we’re getting our ass kicked. It’s not like I go back to the drawing board like gah, we’re doing this terrible, and people are wearing us out on this or that. It’s not that,” the USC head man explained.

Washington running back Jonah Coleman ran for 104 yards and a pair of touchdowns. USC quarterback Miller Moss threw for 293 passing yards and two touchdowns, but tossed in three costly interceptions.

It’s been the same story for much of the season for the Trojans. They’ve blown five fourth quarter leads and they currently sit at 1-5 in the Big Ten Conference.

Lincoln Riley and redshirt plans for USC football

With about a month remaining in the 2024 college football season, redshirt decisions are going to start being made. And USC head coach Lincoln Riley has already given the subject some though.

Riley shared there’s only one player on the edge of burning a potential redshirt by playing in a 5th game, freshman linebacker Elijah Newby. Outside of him, Riley expects the rest of the players who have played in 1, 2, or 3 games to end up redshirting.

“Not too many,” Riley said of players on the edge of redshirting. “Newby is one that we’re going to attempt to redshirt. We’ll see how the next few plays out but probably we’ll wait until postseason to play him again unless something changes. We’ve got several guys that are kind of between one and three games right now and a majority of those guys will probably attempt to redshirt.”

And Riley did note that, at this point, all of the above is a plan. Things are subject to change for a litany of reasons, and some player expecting to redshirt could be tapped to play in more games.

“Again, kind of see how this plays out and then we’ve got several that are already past the threshold so, I think Newby is the main one right now that was playing some snaps for us, mostly on special teams, that we’re going to try to hold on,” Riley said.

On3’s Andrew Graham also contributed to this article.