What USC coach Lincoln Riley, QB Caleb Williams said about Notre Dame football after Irish win

USC coach Lincoln Riley said there isn’t a magic pill for playing better football. Saturday in South Bend, his Trojans could have used one (or 10) of them in a 48-20 defeat to the Notre Dame Fighting Irish.

Here is what Riley and USC quarterback Caleb Williams said about the Trojans’ downfall and what Notre Dame did well in the rivalry game rout.

Opening statement

“Incredibly disappointing night. Just didn’t play good enough to win the game here on the road in a rivalry game against a good opponent. That’s the simple matter. The obvious thing is you lose the turnover battle five to nothing and you give up a kick return for a touchdown, you have a penalty that takes a touchdown off the board, a number of negative plays, that’s he name of the game right there.

“I didn’t see the final stats, but I think they had 250, maybe 260 yards of offense. Thought our defense played well enough to win the football game. Thought we stepped up and did a lot of great things there. But we put our defense in some terrible positions.

“So obviously, we’re really disappointed. It’s a disappointed locker room. Disappointed, certainly not defeated. Not demoralized. We know that we obviously got a lot in front of us. But this game means a lot. we know it means a lot to our fan base, it means a lot to college football, and certainly disappointed that we weren’t nearly good enough football to win tonight.

“I thought the team had great resolve at halftime. Still very much believed at halftime that we were going to win the football game. Came out and got a couple of stops, got the one touchdown in and felt like all the way through up until the kickoff return for a touchdown that we were right there because we were starting to get some stops. We were starting to finally move the ball offensively and get into a rhythym there. And then the kickoff return for a touchdown was the backbreaker there at the end of the game.

“Still very much believe in this football team. One thousand percent. The good that you see from his football team is good enough to beat anybody. But we obviously know we got to put it together and put it together quickly to get our best and to get it from all three sides and to be able to rise together. And we got a great opportunity to do it. I reminded the team and will remind everybody, we’re undefeated in this conference right now. The league we play in right now, I think, is the best conference in college football, top to bottom. Every opportunity that we want is waiting for us including a big one seven days from now in Los Angeles that we’ll be excited to get back and prepare for.

“We’ll watch the tape. we got a corrections and a lot of things we got to fix and get better at. But can’t wait to get back to the Coliseum o go to battle with the guys in this locker room. They’re going to get our best in terms of the staff. And I know we’re going to get their best. And we’re looking forward to bouncing back and playing very well next week.”

On if any existing concerns for USC were magnified in the loss to Notre Dame

“Again, you lose to turnover battle so drastically, it’s hard to— it honestly doesn’t matter a whole lot else what you do when you lose the turnover battle five to nothing. To me, having a kickoff return for a touchdown is almost like losing it six to nothing. You can negate a pretty stout defensive performance. You negate any of the positive plays on special teams or the few that we had offensively. We just consistently played from behind all night.

“I think the big thing offensively is the amount of negative plays. turnovers or getting behind the chains. That obviously showed up for us tonight when we were consistently playing from behind, and you can’t do that against a good defense and a good football team. Our good plays are good enough. Our bad plays are really hurting us right now. Typically when you play really well, your good plays are still good enough and your bad plays on’t kill you.

“We have to take a big step there offensively. And we got to get turnovers. We got to take care of the football. You’re not going to beat anybody good losing the turnover battle like we did tonight.”

On why USC hasn’t been able to put together four quarters in the last few weeks

“It’s a good question. We played pretty well right there before the bye week. We’ve had some stretches of good play here in the last few weeks, but we haven’t been able to put it together. Those are obviously the things that we got to look back and fix. I think this team has a very strong resolve. When I turn on the tape, I watch some of the good things happen and I get really, really excited.

“But we do, we got to put it together and we got to do it quickly. This is the true second half of the season. This is going to be the back half of conference play coming up for us right now with a lot of opportunities right there. The thing we can’t do right now is, we got to let the disappointment of not playing well tonight, we got to get past it. We got to get on. We can’t let tonight beat us twice because we really do have a pretty cool opportunity in front of us.

“Just like I told you guys last year when we got beat at Utah in the last second of that game, if we’ll hang in there and keep swinging, sometimes when you haven’t played your best a few weeks in a row you can get that feeling of, well, you’re a long, long, long ways away. The reality is we’re not that far away. But we do have to push it over the top. We got to play cleaner. We got to coach better. We got to play better all three sides.”

On the USC offensive line not clicking

“Right now, I watch us offensively, everybody took their turns. We had a couple of bad calls by me. Caleb forced a couple he doesn’t typically force. We dropped a few balls. Had a couple of errors by the receivers. We missed a few things up front. We missed a couple f runs that we thought we blocked up pretty well that we didn’t take the correct cut. We kind of just took our turns making mistakes, and that’s what it looks like. a couple times in pass pro when we got beat in one on one situations that we have to win.

“Listen, everybody takes ownership in it. That’s just part of it. There wasn’t one position group offensively that was good enough tonight.”

On the Notre Dame pass rush struggling prior to playing USC

“I think the biggest thing that we did was we put ourselves in so many situations where we were backed up. Long yardage situations become almost like third and long ball and they’re pinning their ears back.
Do we need to protect better? Yes. But there are a lot of things that go into that. The big thing is you can’t continuously put yourself in bad situations against a good defense. And they’re a good defense. We knew that coming in. We put ourselves in too many bad situations. And that’s what happens.”

**QUOTES FROM USC QUARTERBACK CALEB WILLIAMS BELOW**

On if he was forcing things against Notre Dame

“I made mistakes that I usually don’t make. I’ve been in college for three years now. I don’t think I’ve ever had a season or a game or anything like that. Nights like that happen. There were a couple maybe you could called forced. I could have threw that one away. Live to fight another down. But games like this happen in careers when you play for a while or want to play for a while. They just happen like that. Like coach said, you got to get through it. Gotta keep fighting. Gotta be a leader. It starts at the head of the snake. I’ll be better.”

On what the Notre Dame defense did to fluster him

“Everything we saw on tape is what they were doing. A couple throws I always make, I didn’t make. The one to Lake [McRee], went over his head, how often do you see that? On scramble drill, you don’t see that often. And then the other one, like I said, a couple mistakes happened that don’t usually happen. Everything that they were doing they showed on tape. We didn’t go execute as a team. I’m the leader of the team and the leader of the offense. Didn’t do that good tonight. I’ll be better.”