Lincoln Riley on critics of USC's defense: 'Of course we keep receipts'

Lincoln Riley is keeping track of who disparages USC’s defense, as he believes the Trojans are ready to take the next step and turn their unit into one of the best in all of college football in 2025.

Dating back to his time with the Oklahoma Sooners, Riley’s defenses have left a lot to be desired. With D’Anton Lynn calling the shots, the unit took a major step forward this past season, and the Trojans leader sat down with On3’s J.D. PicKell to explain why it means so much to him to prove the rest of the college football world wrong.

“Of course we keep receipts. We’re competitors, right? That’s how we’re all wired,” Riley told PicKell, via The Hard Count. “The politically correct thing is to say ‘No,’ but we all do. You know, and that’s part of it. So, we all get our chance. We always say, ‘Talking season is over at some point, and you’ve got to go play, and you’ve got to go prove it,’ and that’s just — that’s the best part of this game. Excited to see the progress in Year One. I mean, undoubtedly one of the most improved defenses in the country. Now, the goal is to step up and become just one of the best, if not the best, defense in the country. That’s what we feel like we can build here. We always have.

“You have to take steps to do that. Excited that we were able to look at a part of our program and say, ‘All right, you know, this part is not functioning quite the way that we want it to. What do we have to change to get it right?’ I think, you know, the addition of the staff members, the scheme change certainly, changing a lot from a personnel standpoint. You know, you saw the results. Great start there in Year One. So, we’re trying to take a look at every part of the program that way, right? Like, it’s either at a championship level now, or rapidly trending that way, or we’ve got to fix it. It’s in one of those three categories, period. That’s how we viewed every single part of this.

“I think that’s why there’s an excitement within these walls, because I feel like — I compared it to somebody the other day, you get in this scenario, and you feel like, you’re just like — constantly plugging leaks, you know what I mean? Fix this, fix that and eventually you look up like, ‘All right, there’s not quite as many leaks as there was before.’ Like, a lot of these things are starting to settle, and now you feel like some things are in place, and now you just build. That, to me, is one of the most exciting parts.”

Alas, USC’s defense was always going to have to improve inside the Big Ten, and it certainly took a step forward in 2024. Now, it’ll be up to Riley to keep the unit moving in the right direction, allowing his team to reach their full potential in their new conference.

With home games against Missouri State and Georgia Southern to start the season, the USC defense will have plenty of time to get their engines revving in 2025. The sky is the limit, and Lincoln Riley is ready to compete in a major way in Los Angeles next season.