David Pollack reveals his confidence level in USC, Lincoln Riley for 2025

There are always high expectations for the USC Trojans. Going into 2025, after a season where the team underperformed in its first season in the Big Ten, that pressure has again been cranked up on head coach Lincoln Riley.

After struggling at times at USC, there have been some questions about Riley. For analyst David Pollack, there’s still plenty of reason to be confident. However, as he explained on his podcast, See Ball Get Ball, Riley struggled to adjust to some changes.

“Six? 6.5 [on a scale to 10],” Pollack said. “Nobody is going to debate Lincoln Riley as a play-caller and as a coach. I think the biggest thing was that college football kind of changed. The infrastructure of college football changed and you’ve got to kind of change and zig and zag with it.”

How rosters are built in college football has fundamentally changed thanks to NIL and the Transfer Portal. At the same time that happened, Riley made the jump to USC, for which he took a lot of public criticism. Then, the Trojans made the move to the Big Ten, creating another new situation to navigate.

“And he took the USC job, which did not help him from an eyeballs perspective, from a negativity perspective. A lot of that came his way, rightfully or not. He got a lot of money. He got broken off, but to leave a perennial power like Oklahoma, one of the best programs in the country, was a big move and with it, you knew was going to come some of this. You went to a less stable place. To a place that hasn’t sustained success and has been very up and down. You’ve seen struggles and then you go to a new conference, which is hard. It was a tough battle for him to fight with everything going on. Then, all of a sudden, you need resources, and I need you to invest in the program like other places do, and that’s not always the case,” Pollack said.

“So, I think he’s done an okay job. You’ve seen some moments, but you can’t go from what you had at Oklahoma going to the Playoff, Heisman Trophy candidates, winning Heisman Trophies, and then all of a sudden, after Caleb Williams — and Caleb Williams was pretty dang good. He won a Heisman Trophy.”

While Riley has always been known as an excellent offensive mind, defense has been a struggle. That’s not a unique issue to Riley and Pollack believes that once he figures that out, USC has the potential to take a major step forward.

“That’s pretty dang good, but [Riley] still never figured out how to put an offense together with a defense. That’s been his biggest downfall is being able to construct — listen, he’s not alone. Great coaches have to learn. Kirby Smart had to learn how to get an offense. Nick Saban had to learn how to develop an offense and evolve offensively. A lot of times, you have one component you’re really, really good at and the other side has to catch up and keep up, or it’s not your strength or your specialty,” Pollack said. “And then you find that guy that brings you along, that comes beside you — Todd Monken for Kirby — that takes you over to the next level.”

USC opens the 2025 season with Missouri State on August 30th. September 13th, the Trojans will open Big Ten play with a road game against Purdue.