Musings from Arledge: Is USC giving away its season?

A team can give away only so many games before it has given away its season. USC has now given away three of its last four games. It had the Michigan game in the bag; Minnesota never should have been close; and now the Trojans have given away a game to the No. 3 team in the country where a win could have salvaged the season.  

Lincoln Riley likes to say that USC is building something special. I hope so. Right now what it’s building is the resume of another 7-5 team.

Had you told me before the game that USC would run for almost 200 yards and largely shut down Penn State’s running game, I would have felt pretty good about the outcome. But this year’s Trojans have shown that they can lose any number of ways. This week, the pass defense fell apart.  

True, it’s hard to cover a good tight end, and USC has a recent history of being unable to do so. Still it was a bad time for that old habit to pop up again. And hard or not, letting a single guy single-handedly destroy your defense isn’t okay.  

I love this defensive staff. The turnaround in just one season has been fantastic; USC has gone from possibly the worst defense I’ve ever seen to a group that fights and can actually get stops, even against good teams. And they’re doing it without their most talented player, who decided to quit, or their most impactful linebacker, who just can’t stay healthy. The coaching staff has done a great job with a marginally talented group. I’m not going to beat up on D’Anton Lynn and staff. I’ll just say the second half defense was painful to watch and leave it at that.

Now let’s talk about a fan favorite, because we can’t tell the truth about the Penn State game without talking about Miller Moss.

Moss has been heroic for much of the season, bravely standing in the pocket and taking a beating behind a struggling offensive line.  But the offensive line did its job this week. They opened holes for the backs, and they protected Miller Moss. This week, it was Miller Moss who couldn’t get the job done.  USC had opportunities downfield all day and Moss was off just about the entire game.  He then almost gave away the game with a terrible read in the fourth quarter, but Penn State dropped the interception. And then he missed on a routine pass to an open Duce Robinson that would have given USC a reasonable field goal attempt for the win and instead resulted in an interception.

USC fans have been spoiled over the years. Just think about the list: Rodney Peete, Carson Palmer, Matt Leinart, Caleb Williams. Even the second-tier guys—the good, not great—like John David Booty, Mark Sanchez, and Matt Barkley would be the envy of almost any other program. Miller Moss is still building his resume. His place in USC lore is not yet settled. But quarterbacks are judged on whether they make plays when it matters. Moss knows that and signed up for the gig anyway. Against LSU he did it; he made big plays when he needed to make them. Against Penn State he didn’t.

It’s hard to follow a guy like Caleb Williams. And I won’t compare Moss to Caleb Williams; it’s not fair to compare anybody to Caleb Williams, who might be the most talented college QB I’ve ever seen. So I’ll just say this: if USC is going to salvage this season, the team needs a lot more from Miller Moss than it got yesterday.  

And it needs more from Lincoln Riley, too. Completing a routine pass to Duce Robinson probably would have won the game and saved the season. But we shouldn’t let that blind us from the fact that Lincoln Riley’s clock management is consistently awful.  

The Trojans had a first down at the Penn State 49 yard line with 1:49 on the clock. Two plays later they have a third down at the 46, having gained only three yards in 1:35 while still holding onto all three timeouts. I understand that Riley wanted his team to have the only shot to win in regulation. You don’t want to give Penn State the ball back with enough time to win the game. But when Riley waited 19 seconds to call timeout before that third down play, he wasn’t being careful or clever; he was being reckless. USC was already in a position to punt the ball deep into Penn State territory and leave Penn State with only twenty-something seconds on the clock. At that point, you have a major advantage.  So stop playing not to lose and make sure you have enough time to win.  

Riley didn’t do that. If Robinson had caught a slant and been tackled at the 35–a very plausible outcome of that play call—USC only has time to run one more play before attempting a long field goal. If instead Riley calls the timeout with :33 on the clock and Robinson gets tackled at the 35, you still have plenty of time to run a few plays and give your kicker a much more makeable attempt.

Bad clock management didn’t cost USC the Penn State game; bad execution did. But had Miller Moss thrown a better ball, bad clock management could have cost USC the game, and Riley’s inability to manage the clock is a problem that shows up almost every week now. He needs to be better.

That said, I’m not interested in getting into any of these discussions about whether Lincoln Riley should go. I don’t think so, but that’s not why I’m not engaging in the debate. I won’t engage because it’s silly talk. USC has made an enormous, long-term financial commitment to Lincoln Riley. He’s not going anywhere. The fans saying that USC should hire another coach might as well be arguing that USC should bring back Caleb Williams to finish out the season or that USC should hire Pete Carroll with Bill Belichick as his defensive coordinator; all of those comments are equally plausible and realistic.  

Lincoln Riley is USC’s football coach, and he will be for some time. They need to win with him. They’re obviously not doing nearly enough of that with a 5-8 record over the last 13 games. Giving away winnable games against top-five teams hurts. A win yesterday could have completely changed the direction of this season and the program. And USC gave it away.

But the bigger problem this year hasn’t been the play against good teams. USC has played two legitimately good teams; they beat one in the final seconds and lost to the other in overtime. That happens. USC’s season stands on the brink of disaster because it threw away games against a lousy Minnesota team and an average Michigan team that can’t complete a forward pass. Those are the games you cannot lose.  

And now USC faces a series of winnable games before the finale against Notre Dame. If the Trojans can win the next five, they set up a big game against the Irish; they could knock Notre Dame out of the playoffs and finish with a long winning streak and a successful season. That’s all possible. USC can certainly beat bad teams like Maryland, Rutgers, and UCLA, and it can beat average teams like Washington and Nebraska. Those are all winnable games. Win them all, and USC can play one last game for a chance at a truly successful rebuilding season with all kinds of momentum behind the program.  

To do it, USC will have to play much more consistent football than it has the first half of the season. And the Trojans will have to overcome some of the worst officiating I’ve ever seen. I don’t like to complain about officiating, and I’m not going to say the officials cost USC the game in any of their three losses this year. But they certainly get an assist, don’t they? I thought getting away from Pac-12 officials was one of the best things about changing conferences.  But what we’re seeing from the new guys is either an extraordinary level of incompetence or a desire to stick it to the new guys. And frankly, I’m sick of it. 

Bottom line: I want to believe USC will go on a five-game run. I want to believe they will consistently play to their potential, and that they will overcome the clowns wearing the stripes. It could happen. I’ve just seen nothing in the last month to suggest it will.  

If Lincoln Riley and his guys truly are building something special, they’ll win the next five. Lose any of them, and all they’re building is a list of excuses.