Musings from Arledge: USC football in crisis

USC football is in crisis. For the fourth time in five games, USC threw away a fourth-quarter lead. For the second time this season, USC fell apart on the road against a bottom-feeder that had no business even being in the game. 

A season that started with so much promise—a fantastic win over a very good, top-10 LSU team—may now be in a death spiral as ugly as anything we saw during the dark years of Larry Smith, Paul Hackett or Clay Helton. That’s not exactly where USC expected to be in Lincoln Riley’s third year. When USC’s administration gave Fort Knox to Lincoln Riley, they were like the action hero who is trying to decide whether to cut the red wire or yellow wire on the ticking bomb. You take your shot, and it either works or it’s game over. There is no Plan B. 

So it’s up to Lincoln Riley to find a way to salvage this season, this critical recruiting class, his tattered reputation, and a now shaky career trajectory. 

And at this point, none of us has any reason to believe he can do that.

Let’s start with the obvious. Anybody who watched Georgia-Texas last night understands this USC roster is limited. Georgia’s defense is full of guys that even linemen who are projected to be first-round picks find unblockable. USC doesn’t have anybody like that. Not a one. USC’s front-seven talent looks more like a typical Stanford team than a college football blue blood, especially now that Bear Alexander, Eric Gentry, and Anthony Lucas have played their last snaps of the season. At its key pass-rushing position, USC is relying on a small-school transfer who hasn’t had a full sack in 14 games and who can’t make a play on the quarterback even when D’Anton Lynn engineers an unobstructed path into the backfield. That’s not exactly Georgia-like. And that’s not the only position group with deficiencies. 

Still, let’s not go overboard. USC had enough talent to beat LSU. It had enough talent to hold a late-game lead over Penn State. It had enough talent to beat what appears to be a pretty good Wisconsin team. USC has more than enough talent to beat Minnesota and Maryland, two lousy football teams. USC didn’t lose those two games because they were out-talented, though better talent would have provided more of a cushion for their screw ups. They lost those games because USC couldn’t separate when they had a chance and they then choked in the fourth quarter. They lost because they were a modestly talented team that couldn’t live up to their modest abilities. Lincoln Riley and his coaching staff couldn’t get enough out of them. Again. 

Lincoln Riley likes to put the game in the hands of his quarterback. He likes to do that even when it’s not clear he has to. This is a coach who once had the reputation of a guy who understands the importance of a power running game; he was the Air Raid guy who liked to run the rock. But it appears you can take the boy out of the Air Raid program but you can’t take the Air Raid program out of the boy. Riley still tends to revert to a Mike Leach lackey every Saturday when he willingly abandons the running game to chuck the football all over the yard. That’s the sort of thing you might get away with if you have a future NFL number-one-overall pick behind center, as Riley so often does. It’s not something you can afford to do if you have a quarterback who, while gutsy, has huge limitations and a tendency to throw interceptions at the absolute worst times imaginable.

Miller Moss’s inability (or unwillingness) to keep the ball on the read option is an enormous problem for the USC running game. That back-side edge is unblocked most of the time by design; it is the threat that the quarterback will keep the ball that is supposed to keep the backside edge honest and “block” him. Moss is no threat, and therefore there is seldom any “block.” That’s not great. 

Moss is also a poor deep-ball thrower. He consistently underthrew his guys on deep balls against Maryland, and this isn’t a new trend. A big part of the reason USC is one of the worst teams in the country at throwing downfield—let that sink in for a moment—is because Moss is just no threat to throw the throw it accurately. It’s not the only reason, of course; USC’s porous offensive line doesn’t help, and neither do receivers who don’t fight hard enough for the ball. But if you don’t recognize Moss’s limitations throwing deep, it’s because you don’t want to. It’s hard to win as a passing offense when the other team doesn’t have to respect your deep game.

But USC might be able to overcome both of those limitations. What’s really problematic—what is absolutely crippling for this team—is Miller Moss’s tendency to throw picks that you just cannot throw. Disastrous, awful, gut-spilling picks. Bill Buckner fielding the ground ball against the Mets picks. Carl Lewis singing the national anthem picks. Dramatic, momentum-shifting picks. It happens all the time, and it has to stop—or Miller Moss has to stop playing.

Miller Moss isn’t exactly a turnover machine. His 14-6 TD-to-interception ratio is very mediocre, but not shocking. His interception rate of 2.1% is also mediocre and not at all like a Lincoln Riley quarterback, but it’s not insane. The problem is that Moss throws far too many devastating picks. 

Just look at the track record. Moss has started eight games for USC. In half of them, he threw an inexcusable, you-just-can’t-do-that type of interception. Sometimes USC has overcome those; sometimes they’ve even overcome them with later great play from Miller Moss; but often they haven’t. 

Against Louisville, USC was up 28-14 in the third quarter with a 1^st and goal at the 8. You must get points in that situation, as a score probably ices the game. But Moss tried to force a throw in the end zone, got picked, and the ball was returned 61 yards. On first down! A few plays later, a game that was turning into a blowout was a seven-point game. 

You cannot throw that interception.

Against Michigan, USC had climbed out of a 14-0 hole to make it 14-10, and USC’s defense was dominated Michigan’s offense. With a 3^rd and 3 at their own 41 in the third quarter Moss stares down Zachariah Branch who is matched up on the best corner in football and gives up a pick six. 

You cannot throw that interception. 

Against Penn State, with the score tied and time running down, Miller Moss overthrows a wide open, 6’6” Duce Robinson on a slant that likely would have set up a makeable field goal and a huge upset of a top-five team. That win could have changed the trajectory of the season. Instead, an easy pitch and catch turns into catastrophe. 

You cannot throw that interception.

Against Maryland, up 21-7 in the third quarter, with a first down at the Maryland 41 and in a position to put the game out of reach, Moss floated the ball off his back foot over the middle of the field for a terrible interception. Once again, we’re talking about a first-down play. One play later, a game that was on the verge of a blowout was a one-score game. 

You cannot throw that interception.

Moss does some good things almost every week. He has shown courage playing behind a questionable offensive line, and his teammates love him. But there are shortcomings you can tolerate from your quarterback; a tendency to throw back-breaking interceptions in half your games is not one of them. 

I don’t know what USC has behind Moss. We don’t see practices, and we don’t sit in on quarterback meetings. I don’t know Maiava’s grasp of the offense, and I don’t know if he will also make bad decisions at the worst possible time. I just know that the status quo is intolerable.

Not that Moss is getting help from his offensive teammates. The O line may actually be improved, but that’s a little like saying Roseanne Barr looked better yesterday when she came home from the salon. It might be true, but it’s still not saying much. The wide receivers are talented underachievers who make some spectacular catches but also block poorly, don’t fight for the ball, and drop too many passes. They need to live up to their potential in a hurry. The running backs are solid. There’s no Reggie or LenDale in that room, but I’ll take ‘em. It’s too bad Riley doesn’t put the ball in their hands more often. 

On defense, what can you say? I still love the defensive improvement. The defense is giving up 22 points a game—it was 67 last year, I think—and if not for a couple of disastrous turnovers by the offense, that number would be 20. It’s not a particularly talented group, especially now, and almost all of those guys have the same number of sacks that I do, but they’re fighting. It’s just that they also have a terrible time getting a stop when it matters. 

Until they did. Last night they got a stop that should have won the game—until USC’s special teams gave it away, and the defense resumed their standard program of collapsing in the fourth quarter. Apart from Eddie Czaplicki—stud!—the Trojan special teams are a circus. They should play in a tent, not a stadium; they could run the special teams units on the field in a Volkswagen Bug, and all 11 guys could jump out in oversized shoes and run around hitting each other in the face with pies and making balloon animals. Zachariah Branch fair catching punts with 15 yards of space pretty much distills USC’s special teams to its essence; tons of potential, consistently wasted in head-scratching ways.

So I guess I’m saying it’s just about all bad right now. That two of these games came down to a missed tackle by Kamari Ramsey, USC’s defensive MVP this season, just goes to show that football really is a team game. Miller Moss plays in the biggest spotlight, and he isn’t playing well enough. But he’s also not getting the help he needs from his teammates. Not even the really good ones.

It’s hard to be a USC football fan. The school has repeatedly shot its football program in the foot for years. It’s the Wile E. Coyote of blue bloods; every time you turn around it pulls a string that drops an anvil on its head. You can’t hire Pat Haden and Lynn Swann to run your athletic department. You can’t hire Clay Helton to coach your team. And if you are dumb enough to hire him, you can’t leave him in place forever. (Isn’t that how long he was here? Felt like it.) And you can’t pay a fortune to hire the game’s top young coach and then refuse to engage in the same pay-for-play game as everybody else, twiddling your thumbs as your competitors steal your lunch money on the recruiting trail. So, yes, we are here for all kinds of reasons that have nothing to do with Lincoln Riley.

Yet it is Riley’s fault that this team looks like a Paul Hackett team against lousy competition, and it’s Riley’s fault that his own failures have largely destroyed his once-golden reputation. If he has anything left in his bag of tricks—if there’s any magic to be found anywhere—now is a good time to show it. Because he’s on the verge of becoming Jimbo Fisher, only without Jimbo’s national title. 

Of course, Riley isn’t going anywhere. A&M boosters will pay buyouts the size of Guatemala’s GDP, but USC won’t. A&M boosters have been wasting money for years—it’s their thing—and they care more about football than USC boosters do. So Riley is the guy for the foreseeable future. C’est la vie. 

And that means what USC needs most of all is players. This coaching staff would win with a Pete Carroll roster—maybe not a title, but at least against Maryland and Minnesota. But we’re far from that roster now, and the program is in deep trouble if this recruiting class starts to fall apart. The university’s decision not to play the NIL game like everybody else for two years has left gaping holes in the roster that must be filled immediately. If USC can’t start stacking top-ten recruiting classes, there is no chance it can compete in the Big 10. 

And I just don’t know that USC can hold together the recruiting class playing like this. I don’t care how great Coach Henderson is at connecting with recruits, it’s hard to recruit when you choke in the fourth quarter every week. Choking games away is to recruits what living in your mom’s basement is to women; it’s hard to close the deal once they know about it. Recruiting pitches are great. Fancy dinners at Riley’s place are cool. Seeing the Heisman Trophies is awesome. But at some point, talk becomes cheap. At some point, you have to win games. 

And right now, USC only seems able to throw them away.