Lincoln Riley says USC coaching 'needs to be better' in road environments

No. 6 USC is cruising early in the Lincoln Riley era, with the offensive mastermind engineering a stark and rapid turnaround on the West coast. But Riley isn’t satisfied yet, saying this week the coaching needs to improve on the road.

Particularly offensively, Riley wasn’t thrilled with how things went in Saturday’s narrow 17-14 win over Oregon State in Corvallis, Ore.

“On offensive ball it can just take one little thing a little bit off, the impact it can have, especially on the road,” Riley said. “Against a good team it just magnifies, whether coaching, whether preparation, whether playing. Everything is magnified. You just feel it.”

The Trojans have had their two lowest yardage totals offensively in road games at Stanford and Oregon State.

Of course, most programs around the country would kill for a ‘down’ day like the one USC’s offense had at Stanford, where the Trojans scored 41 points and piled up 505 yards of offense.

Oregon State was a bit more dicey.

The Beavers limited the Trojans to 357 yards of offense and just 17 points, getting quarterback Caleb Williams out of sync early on. Williams finished 16-of-36 passing for 180 yards with just one touchdown. He added nine carries for 27 yards on the ground.

USC coaching needs to be better on the road

So how exactly can USC’s coaching improve on the road? What, specifically, is Riley looking for?

“I definitely get the question. I know I made the comment,” Riley said. “There’s a lot that goes into it. I would just say, overall the coaching needs to be better. Again, it’s a fine line. When things are working good there’s a lot of people doing a lot of good things.”

The Trojans obviously have a lot of that going on, despite Riley’s dissatisfaction coming off the most recent outing. USC currently ranks 25th nationally in total offense (479.2 yards per game) and tied for 17th in scoring offense (42.2 points per game).

Williams is among the current Heisman Trophy favorites.

So if there is indeed still plenty of room for improvement, USC will be a very dangerous team in Pac-12 play. Possibly even a playoff contender if all continues to go well.

“The bottom line is for the offense is the offense has got to get coached better and the offense has got to play better, regardless of where we’re playing,” Riley said. “But certainly when we do play on the road as time goes on, knowing that those mistakes are going to be magnified, we’ve got to be better than that.”

USC returns to action on Saturday with a home game against Arizona State that will kick off at 10:30 p.m. ET with a broadcast on ESPN.