LOS ANGELES – To be fair, this USC football team didn’t misrepresent itself. It didn’t set out to sell you on an impossible dream this season.
These Trojans are who they said they’d be: A team with modest expectations.
It really shouldn’t be a shock that USC, a team with upside and obvious flaws, finds itself 3-3 and outside the Associated Press Top 25. It shouldn’t surprise you when it finds itself outside the College Football Playoff when the season shakes out.
Now, we might have thought there was a world wherein they could contend for the Big Ten title in its first year in the challenging conference. But to hear receiver Kyron Hudson tell it at media day, the goal wasn’t so lofty. Rather it the main things was “just being ourselves. Not being too high, not being too low.”
We might have talked ourselves into believing they had a shot at the CFP, especially after the Trojans kicked off the season by winning a high-profile thriller against LSU.
And we might expect a program with USC’s rich legacy to harbor those sorts of expectations year in and year out, but defensive tackle Gavin Meyer told me at media day that “you don’t want to put a specific benchmark to it.”
This isn’t a team that came into the season with a championship-of-bust mentality. It’s a program playing catchup with NIL leaders. That has insufficient depth on both its offensive and defensive lines. That is inexperienced at receiver. That doesn’t have a super-duper-star quarterback like Caleb Williams to hide many of those inadequacies.
That doesn’t have a magician as its head coach, as Lincoln Riley reminded us before the season started: “I can’t wave a magic wand and everything be perfect right away.”
But still, they’re somehow so close and so faraway, and how’s that for an optical illusion?
These Trojans have been ranked as high as No. 11 in the nation, in position to win every game they’ve lost, starting with a 27-24 heartbreaker at No. 18 Michigan on Sept. 21, a cruel 24-17 encore at Minnesota on Oct. 5 and, Saturday, a 33-30 overtime loss to Penn State at the Coliseum.
That they were close isn’t the salve Riley wants us to think it is, when his team could have won any of those games. Should have, his team’s fans believe. Saturday’s included.
The Trojans – now unranked and 1-3 in the Big Ten – built a 20-6 lead against the No. 4 Nittany Lions.
In a game that felt like it was going to play out as a chess match between Riley and Penn State’s James Franklin, both coaches were digging deep in their grab bags of tricks. USC was supplementing a balanced attack with some trickery, like the fake reverse that set up a 75-yard touchdown run by Quinten Joyner.
But then the second half began and the Nittany Lions came roaring back. All it took was two bad defensive series and a crushing holding penalty on offense and USC’s two-touchdown advantage had – poof! – disappeared. Penn State pulled even, 20-20, with 4:42 to go in the third quarter.
The Trojans too often lost track of Penn State’s do-everything tight end Tyler Warren, whose 17 receptions (for 224 yards) set a record for a USC opponent.
And the Trojans seemed to lose track of their own running backs, too, going away from Woody Marks for large swaths of action, even after the senior was eating up large swaths of turf with just about every carry (he finished with 111 yards in 20 carries).
And still, USC was in position to win. With the game tied 30-30, possession at the 49-yard line and 1:27 to play in regulation, Riley check-mated himself. He ran only three more plays, letting the clock run, thinking the Trojans could kick a field goal to win it as time expired.
They never got the chance, though, because with 14 seconds left, quarterback Miller Moss overthrew Duce Robinson, his pass intercepted by Jaylen Reed.
And the field goal attempt kicker Michael Lantz didn’t get in regulation? He got a shot from 45 yards out in overtime and it sailed wide left.
“Excruciating,” Miller called this loss, wearing a 1,000-yard stare.
“To put yourself in position to win these games is freaking hard to do to begin with” said Riley, who also delivered a defiant sort of mea culpa when he was asked about his accountability in USC’s late-game letdowns. “It all falls on my shoulders at the end, and that’s part of why they call me head coach.”
He also said he expects the Trojans to rebound: “We’re excited for what’s coming up,” he said. “And we understand the opportunities that are ahead for us.”
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What opportunities?
A bowl game? Winning out, perhaps? Beating Maryland, Rutgers, Washington, Nebraska? Redemption against Notre Dame? Against UCLA?
Learning how to close?
How to win?
If those modest goals seem like reasonable expectations now, they probably were to start with too.