Urban Meyer points out two primary issues for USC defense ahead of Notre Dame

The USC defense has been under a lot of scrutiny this season as the group has struggled to maintain and contain opposing offenses from driving down the field and scoring a lot of points. The Trojans have been lucky to emerge with a 6-0 record at the halfway mark, but they face their biggest test in Notre Dame this weekend.

Everyone is trying to figure out what the issues are with the team’s defense, and whether they are fixable as Lincoln Riley and USC enters the more difficult part of their schedule. Urban Meyer explained on Urban’s Take with Tim May his thoughts on the USC defense ahead of this weekend’s major matchup.

“You look at coach Riley’s background and I think the average and —once again, I’m gonna do this on big new kickoff — is they average number four on the total offense over his career,” Meyer said. “They average number 75 I believe in defense. I spent a lot of time watching him this week and there’s a variety of issues that could cause that defense. Number one would be personnel. Number two would be scheme. I don’t see that.”

The USC defense has allowed 37 points in its last three conference games this season, including 41 points in an overtime victory this past weekend to Arizona. The Wildcats hadn’t scored that many points in a game since last season.

The week prior, Colorado nearly came back from 41-14 down to tie the game before running out of time to lose 48-41.

“The scheme looks pretty secure, pretty sound,” Meyer said. “Obviously there’s mistakes made. For someone to say USC has bad players, then you’re not very smart. Maybe they’re not playing well, you could say that. But don’t say they’re bad players.”

Instead, Meyer has identified two aspects of the USC defense that has been lacking in recent weeks.

First is the team’s number of missed tackles. Second is the defensive backs struggling to make plays on the football in the air.

He said that while these issues have nearly caused major problems over the last few weeks, the good news is they aren’t season killers. They are fixable problems.

“The last two weeks, they have more missed tackles than any other team in the country: 34 missed tackles in two weeks,” Meyer said. “Then I really studied the why and — once again, I don’t want to give too much of a foresight of what we’re going to cover on Big Noon — it’s the rugby tackling. They’re lunging. They’re not taking that extra step and they’re not wrapping guys up or the term killing the engine. The engine is the legs of the ball carrier. They’re not doing that. The good thing is that’s a fix. You can fix that. It takes a little bit of time. It takes a lot of effort.

“The second thing is the defensive backs making a play on the ball. In zone coverage, you should be facing the ball. In man coverage, the ability to read the eyes of the receiver and then go up and make a play on the ball. We did a stat — if you can fix tackling and that, you’re talking about a couple of 100 yards a game of yardage that can be fixed. The good thing is those can be fixed.”