Musings from Arledge: A defensive disaster

You don’t know what you’ve got until you play a decent football team on the road. 

And, like it or not, now we know.

USC has some elite skill-position talent on offense. Jayden Maiava is a much better player than he was last year. Ja’Kobi Lane is very skilled. So is Waymond Jordan. Makai Lemon is the best receiver in the country not named Jeremiah Smith. And the offensive line, while not necessarily dominant, is good enough to allow those guys to make plays—at least when facing a defense that is not elite.

But the transition to a physical, defense-first football team—something USC’s coaches were preaching and USC’s fans were believing—has been a spectacular failure. It has not happened. USC’s defense is still a hot mess.

Many of us thought that the defensive line would be good enough to help a young secondary. It’s not. And today at least, it wasn’t even close to being good enough. That defensive line got pushed around all day by an Illinois offensive line that has embarrassed itself for much of the year. Against that group, USC’s defensive front wasn’t even competitive. It was a mismatch. USC trotted out Glass Joe. I don’t think anybody saw that coming, and nobody has to tell you that this is a giant red flag going forward.

But at least I like some of the pieces in that D-line room, and I believe that the young guys could become great. That’s what passes for a silver lining defensively, because behind that defensive line, you have far more question marks than answers. 

No, that’s not true. I’m lying. We know the answers; we just don’t want to say them out loud.

Eric Gentry is not at his best against a physical, run-first football team. But the guy still made the play of the game by punching the football out near the goal line. He’s a keeper. I think there are some good pieces at safety. It obviously helps when Kamari Ramsey is on the field. USC doesn’t have anybody who can replace him, and his absence was huge.

But everywhere else? The reality is quite simple. The defense USC rolled out at the other linebacker spot, at corner, and a nickel back was a disaster. Every position was far below what you’d expect from an average Big Ten player. I’d like to sugarcoat that statement, but I watched the entire game and didn’t see any sugar anywhere. 

It will be extremely difficult for USC to beat decent teams with the corners and nickels they played today. That group is young, yes. It’s inexperienced, yes. It’s going to get better … maybe yes. But not in time. Right now, this group is so far from being good that even a normal level of improvement over the coming weeks just won’t get it done. 

That truth is we’re not seeing flashes of greatness mixed in with lots of mistakes. That’s what you expect to see from talented young players. We’re seeing a lot of guys who aren’t even competitive with Illinois’ wideouts. We’re seeing a group that just got abused all day by a group that, let’s not kid ourselves, is nowhere near elite. USC’s secondary got humiliated by average players.

For much of that game, at most positions in the secondary, USC didn’t have anybody who could cover or anybody who could tackle. Young players should get better. But that group is not going to grow up in two weeks before Michigan comes to the Coliseum. It’s not going to grow up in time to play in South Bend or Eugene. USC will get Kamari Ramsey back—yes!—and will put Dee Reddick and Alex Graham on the field and hope they can play; because if they can’t, USC will struggle all year against decent teams. That’s the bottom line. There’s no point in pretending otherwise.

The really subpar play in the secondary left D’Anton Lynn with very few options. His front seven couldn’t get pressure and couldn’t stop the run. Ordinarily you’d bring more guys in the box and try to affect the quarterback with the blitz. But if you know you can’t trust the secondary to do anything right? I don’t know. Nobody knows. There’s no answer for that.

So if your defensive line gets pushed around and your secondary can’t be trusted to cover or tackle, what do you do? You score on practically every possession or you lose. That sounds like the game plan for Lincoln Riley’s entire USC tenure, doesn’t it? I guess some things never change.

Now this isn’t an Alex Grinch-level disaster, at least I don’t think so, not yet. Well, the secondary might be. I kept looking for Donte Williams on the sideline. But we can still expect USC to get some stops against the average teams on the schedule, particularly when playing at home. But not only will this group not beat Notre Dame or Oregon, it probably can’t play a close game. Those games don’t look like losses right now; they look like public executions. And you can be sure that Dan Lanning will be cannon balling all over USC if he gets the chance. And that Nebraska trip is looking scary as well, not because Nebraska is so great offensively, but because they’ll line up and run the football with attitude and because of how USC plays on the road.

USC needs to put different guys on the field at key positions going forward. 

This is a bitter disappointment, not because I thought this USC team could win the Big Ten or sniff a national title run. It’s a disappointment because we thought this team was different. We thought this team would have a defense and a run game you could bring on the road. We thought this team was tougher. We thought it was better in the trenches. 

Well, I thought those things, at least. I was wrong. Welcome to USC football. Second verse; same as the first.

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I’m stunned that Lincoln Riley didn’t bleed clock on the last USC possession. Everybody in North America knew that USC’s defense could not be trusted to get a stop at the end of that game. It took two miracle fumbles to keep the game close. So, yes, that was a great throw by Maiava and a great catch by Lemon. And I understand Riley’s perspective that it’s hard enough to score already, so don’t handcuff yourself. Still, I didn’t like the call. When your defense is completely unable to stop the other team (absent another lucky break with a fumble), I think you have to drain the clock. Run it to nothing and try to win that game on the last play.

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Waymond Jordan is a very good player. But he has to stop putting the ball on the ground. 

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We knew Jayden Maiava was a better player this year. What we didn’t know is how he’d play on the road with his jersey dirty for the first time all year. We saw today. He wasn’t perfect. The pick was devastating, and he missed two wide open guys on the next series. But he also bounced back and played very well for the rest of the game. No quarterback plays as well under pressure as they do when the protection is great. And Maiava could have some rough days in South Bend and Eugene. If I had to bet the mortgage, that’s the way I’d bet. But Maiava has answered the questions people had about him. He is a good quarterback and one of the biggest reasons to feel good about USC’s offense moving forward.

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I’m going to split up Musings this week. I don’t have anything else to say about the big picture from today’s game. In a few days we’ll take a closer look at some of the key breakdowns in the secondary to better understand what went wrong. Don’t worry: we’ll provide a trigger warning for our sensitive readers. But that’s a task for another day. I feel like those sad sacks in the Southwest Airlines commercials. Wanna get away? Yes, yes I do. 

USC fans complained that the AP poll wasn’t giving this team enough credit. We complained that USC was being overlooked. USC’s detractors got the last laugh. They were right. You still cannot trust USC football. You just can’t. Not on the road and not against anybody with a pulse.

Bad day. Very bad day.