Musings from Arledge: Lincoln Riley has a defense

In his first two seasons at USC, Lincoln Riley won 19 games with half a team.  Now we get to see what he can do with a full team.  

We can make fun of the Paul Finebaums if we want. You know what, let’s do that. That sounds like a good time. The truth is that college football does mean more to the SEC, and if you want to build profits, manning an oar for the SEC hype machine is pretty good business.

It’s also the case that USC’s critics had a point. Lincoln Riley’s teams hadn’t played much defense over the years, and they hadn’t played any defense at all the last two years. 

And despite the star-studded new defensive staff, there were still reasons for concern. It looked like USC struck out in the spring transfer portal.  That wasn’t just the perception with national pundits who don’t closely follow USC; that was the perception on WeAreSC. Lincoln Riley said they planned to get defensive linemen in the spring portal. All the fans were convinced they needed to get defensive linemen in the spring portal. What they got was a guy who didn’t start at Wyoming. That, after getting a guy from Vanderbilt in the earlier portal window. And after getting a guy back from the transfer portal who was expected to play about as much as I would. It wasn’t promising. Every USC fan, whether they admitted it or not, had some level of concern.

Especially because this group—this underwhelming group—had an opening day appointment with what is supposed to be the best offensive line in the country.  It looked like a potential mismatch.  

It wasn’t. That LSU O line is good, especially in pass protection. But Brian Kelly wanted to run the football. LSU players were talking about how they were going to run the football. Anybody who has seen USC play even a single game in the last three seasons wants and expects to run the football against the Trojans. The better Pop Warner teams could have gone for 200 against last year’s defense. But this is a new group, and it was a struggle all night for LSU. USC consistently squeezed the running lanes. They consistently tackled well. And in the big moments—4th and goal on the opening series, on 3^rd and 1 in the fourth quarter with USC down and absolutely needing a stop to keep hope alive—the USC defensive front was more than up to the challenge.  

That wasn’t a perfect performance. More of a pass rush would have been nice. A more consistent running game would have been nice. Making chip-shot field goals is a must. But make no mistake: that was a huge win against a very good opponent. LSU played well. They didn’t throw the game away. They didn’t fall apart. They played hard, and they played well. And USC just took the game away from them.

Trying to list all of the heroes would take too much space. So let’s just call out a couple. Miller Moss was a stud. Let Will Howard go to Ohio State; Miller is better anyway. Kyron Hudson heard all of the offseason talk about the super soph receivers and decided to put together a young Odell Beckham impersonation in critical moments. Stud. Eric Gentry was fantastic. The super sophs all made big plays.  The new secondary tackled dramatically better than the last few groups did. Eddie Czaplicki consistently changed the field position game. Woody Marks can play.

But what I really want to focus on is the heart of that team. When they were down 17-13 and got stopped on 4th down in LSU territory with 8 minutes left, things looked bleak. Even most good teams would have folded under those circumstances.  USC did not fold. The defense came up with a huge stop, and the offense put together back-to-back touchdown drives. And the team dominated the 4^th quarter. They outscored LSU 14-3. They outgained LSU 173-61. And whenever they needed a big play under pressure, they made one. That’s what championship teams do.  

And once a team has done it, once they have dug deep, pulled themselves out of a hole, and made big plays at the end to finish off an opponent—especially against a very good opponent, in a raucous stadium, on national television—they don’t forget how.  It becomes part of them.  They remember later when they need to do it again.  They believe.  

That was a different USC team we saw tonight. And it wasn’t only the new defensive scheme and the star defensive coaches.  It was also a team with a new attitude, one with a killer instinct we haven’t seen in many years. USC was on the ropes late in the game and instead of folding, they gathered themselves, stood up, and clubbed LSU to death. Tiger bait? Nope.  

I don’t know if USC will make the playoff this year. But I know the group we saw tonight has a good chance. Michigan’s defense will be a challenge. But I’ve been telling anybody who will listen that Michigan is not a top-ten team. You can’t lose 17 senior starters, including your star quarterback and your entire offensive line, and your head coach without taking a step back. Michigan was lousy offensively against Fresno State. They’ll probably get better as the season goes on, but they don’t play USC later in the year, and they’re about to get beat up by Texas. That game in Ann Arbor is very, very winnable. And if the Trojans win that one, they’ll be sitting well inside the top ten with two of their four toughest games already behind them.

The truth is they might be the favorites in all of their other games. Penn State has to come to the Coliseum, and the Nittany Lions don’t win big games very often. Notre Dame is tough defensively, but they have major issues on the offensive line, and I don’t love their skill guys. And they’re not the same away from South Bend anyway. Washington is depleted. UCLA is ghastly.   

Here’s the bottom line: every game on the schedule is winnable, which does not mean USC will win them all. But they can win them all. And they are going to win a bunch of ‘em.

And even if they drop a few of those winnable games, Riley is now able to show that proof of concept. Riley’s teams haven’t played great defensive historically. Riley’s teams at USC couldn’t even line up defensively much of the time. So all the allegedly savvy commentators dismissed these Trojans. Finebaum thought Riley would get fired this year (A clown statement from a Southern clown who spends all of his time stroking the egos of his Southern fan base). But it wasn’t Lincoln Riley that was pounding the table and almost having an aneurysm in his post-game presser.

Riley has been telling the fans, the media, and recruits that USC is building something special. It sounded good, but words are cheap. The defensive staff looked great on paper, but games aren’t won on paper. USC had to go out and prove it. And for at least one week, in the biggest opener since the Alabama massacre, they did just that. The Trojans are back as a force on both sides of the ball. The team we saw last night is a good, well-rounded, mentally tough football team. They’re going to make some noise in the Big 10 this year. And they’re going to be a lot of fun to watch.  

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Random college football thoughts:

Coaching matters. No matter how many bags of cash you have to buy players, you still have to coach them.  I still don’t know if Oregon’s staff can coach.  Last year they won a lot of games with a talented team but twice got beat by their rival. And they sure didn’t look like much in week one this year. Oregon is only slightly better than an FCS team, apparently. They’ve been talking a bunch in Eugene. They’ll tell anybody who listens how good they are. And the roster looks impressive. Phil’s money bought a bunch of shiny pieces, but the sum appears to be worth far less than the individual parts.  

But at least they’re still aggressive on 4th down, no? Oregon is the number three team in the nation only if the nation is Estonia.  Go Boise. 

After hearing DeShaun Foster’s speech at the Big 10 media day, I’ve been wondering what type of pre-game speech he could deliver. Now we know. UCLA came out of the locker room essentially comatose against Hawaii and only avoided a disastrous loss because they were, you know, playing Hawaii. The Bruins look like a really bad football team.

Notre Dame’s schedule is embarrassing. I think Mater Dei plays a tougher slate.

Miami’s is no better. The Canes looked solid against a Florida team in death-spiral mode. But they won’t need to be Jimmy Johnson’s Canes to finish with a single loss. What is the toughest remaining game on the schedule? A home game against FSU? Please.

Because college football voters have always only looked at the second number of a team’s record, Notre Dame and Miami are virtual locks to make the playoff. But I don’t know how good either one is. Kyle Field is a tough place to play, but Texas A&M is consistently the biggest underachiever in college football. Bunch of weirdos, too. And Florida is gross. Billy Napier is going to make somebody very happy next year as an offensive coordinator.  

Georgia is frightening. Clemson is a shadow of what they were when Dabo was terrorizing Nick Saban. They’ll still be fine in the ACC. I know they want to be there about as badly as someone wants to be on a prison chain gang. But there’s an upside—it’s a lot easier to get to nine or ten wins when you’re playing a bunch of stiffs, and they will be.

How many more coaches are going to put their seasons on DJ U’s shoulders before we all just stop and admit that the kid is just not a good quarterback?

I hope I’m wrong about this, but Texas will embarrass Michigan on Saturday.