Musings From Arledge: USC Lacking Discipline on Defense

That ASU game didn’t feel very good. I expected USC to bounce back after the Oregon State scare. I expected the Trojans to take it to ASU and put the game away by halftime. But, honestly, apart from Caleb Williams — who, despite one very bad decision in the red zone, was great — that was not a stellar performance.  

The first half, especially, was a mess. The offense scored on three of their four possessions, but it was a little sloppy at times. There were a couple of false starts, two holding penalties, and the pass protection was not good. Caleb Williams had to play Superman ball to avoid rushers, and he carried the offense the entire first half. But the offense was at least moving the ball and scoring points, which is what they’re supposed to do.

The defense, by contrast, was an unmitigated disaster. ASU was in free fall coming into this game. It was a team with no confidence. USC’s defense looked completely unprepared and stunk up the place for the first 30 minutes before playing much better in the second half.

I want to look at some big-picture items before focusing in on a few plays that show some of what I think is wrong with the defense.  

The commentators on ESPN were talking about USC’s rush defense numbers and how no team has ever made the college football playoff with rush defense numbers that poor. And, true to form, the rush defense started off terribly. ASU averaged almost 7 yards per carry for the first half. The numbers by the end of the night looked pretty good, largely because five second-half sacks took rushing yardage from ASU, and because the Trojans did a much better job in the first three series of the second half.  

On the season, USC is giving up 4.5 yards per carry, which is 87th in the nation. That’s not good. (Utah, by the way, is also giving up 4.5 yards per carry on the season, which could be important on October 15.)  

Against the pass, USC has been much better. The Trojans are 13th in passing efficiency defense, third in sacks at 3.8 sacks per game, and second in interceptions at 2.4 per game. Those are solid numbers. There are breakdowns in the pass defense — we’ll look at one in a minute — but USC’s pass defense is good enough to make the playoff. The run defense, currently, is not.

Part of the problem is that USC’s front seven players aren’t great at shedding blocks. The Trojans will go for stretches where every player up front is losing his one-on-one battles.

But that’s not the only problem. Sometimes it’s a lack of discipline that hurts the Trojans. I want to look at three different defensive plays from the first half where I think that was the case against ASU.

The first play is the first touchdown.  

On this first play, USC is in man coverage. Shane Lee has the running back if he comes out of the backfield his direction. The running back does just that, and Lee moves to the flats where he almost gets picked by the tight end, but Lee avoids contact.

And this is where the play goes south.  Lee on a running back is never a good matchup for USC.  But Lee can at least make the opposition earn it.  He doesn’t here.  Although Lee is in man coverage, he decides to take his eyes off his man and take a look back at the QB.  

As soon as he does this, the play is over.  It looks like a blown coverage, but I think it’s really an example of a (good) player failing to play with discipline, and the breakdown in fundamentals leads to an easy TD.

And here is the result:

We pick up on the very next play from scrimmage for the ASU offense.  

ASU lines up under center with two tight ends and a single back.  The key players on this series will be Solomon Byrd who is shading the outside of the tight end on the bottom of the defensive line, and Max Williams, who is lined up just behind and outside of Shane Lee at around the 30 yard line.  Williams appears to be in man coverage on the tight end on his side. 

ASU hands off to the single back.  Shane Lee fills the C gap on his side.  Byrd has contain on this side, and he maintains good leverage.  He doesn’t get hooked, and he’s in a strong position to keep contain.  Max Williams reads run and quickly attacks the line of scrimmage.   But watch what happens:

Williams comes way too far upfield, and he allows the tight end just to drive him out of the play.  Had Williams engaged with the tight end around the line of scrimmage with his right shoulder and kept his left hand free, he might have shrunk the giant hole that the running back runs through.  We used to call this setting the sideline.  But he didn’t.  He simply took himself out of the play and gave the running back that entire side of the field.

Byrd also has an opportunity to make a good play.  But instead of keeping his shoulders square to the line of scrimmage, engaging the blocker with his right hand, and keeping his left hand free, Byrd turns his shoulders perpendicular to the line of scrimmage and lets the running back cut right off his back for about 23 yards.  Byrd almost looks like he’s trying to execute a down block instead of playing his gap.  I’m honestly not sure what he’s doing.

The result of this play is a huge gain. But I’m not convinced this is a talent problem here. Byrd and Williams don’t play sound, fundamental football. They give this up; it wasn’t forced on them.

Now I want to take a look at one more play. This is ASU’s last touchdown of the first half.  

This was a drop back pass, and ASU’s QB broke contain around the right end. There is only one person who can make this play — Jaylin Smith, who is in the middle of the end zone and isn’t currently coverage anybody. Smith rightly recognizes the problem and gets upfield towards the QB.

Here, Smith breaks down. That’s understandable in most cases, because you don’t want to be out of control and have the runner put a move on you in the open field. Still, in these circumstances, I’m not sure it makes a ton of sense. He’s a yard deep in the end zone, and breaking down so you can hit a guy just past the goal line isn’t going to help a ton. He probably should have been more aggressive, even understanding that he might have missed the tackle in the process.  

Now watch what happens:

Smith misses the QB. Watching the play multiple times, I think he intended to miss him. What he should have done is hit the QB! His goal as soon as he saw that the QB was going to run should have been to explode through him. He may or may not have been able to stop the touchdown, but anytime you get a clean shot at the other team’s quarterback, you need to make the most of it. And this is a culture thing: there are no free lunches. Yes, you may score on us, but we will make you pay. Allowing the other team’s QB to scramble for a TD and then avoiding contact so he doesn’t even pay a price is unacceptable for any defensive player.  

This was, in the first half at least, a defense that was not physical and was not mentally ready to play. Not hitting the quarterback in this situation is a good example of this lousy mindset by the USC defenders.

Fortunately, the defense played much better in the second half. If not for the freak play where Domani Jackson had the pick and instead deflects it into the stomach of an ASU receiver who is laying on his back, and a questionable pass interference penalty, ASU would not have scored in the second half.

But USC can’t afford to wait until the second half to start playing. Against a better team, and almost everybody left on the schedule is a better team than ASU, that sort of first half will be very costly.

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By the way, on the topic of pass interference penalties, I think the Pac-12 officials throw that flag far too often. But Rod Gilmore’s lengthy tirade against the pass interference call against ASU was ridiculous. The guy clearly got to the receiver early and pulled down the receiver’s arm. That is the very definition of pass interference. I have no idea what Gilmore was talking about.

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I told you guys UCLA is dangerous. They’re inconsistent, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they embarrass themselves a couple of times in the coming weeks. But make no mistake: that offense is going to give USC all they can handle. The offense needs to put up 45 that week.

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If you like Oklahoma Sooners rants, join us for Inside the Trojans Huddle this week. I’m going to return to one of my favorite topics.