Musings from Arledge: Betting on this USC defense
Eight months ago, USC head coach Lincoln Riley had a potentially career-defining decision to make. He knew he had a generational talent at quarterback and that his 2023 offense would be immensely talented. He knew, in fact, that he would have a national-championship-level offense. He also knew that the defense was a disaster in 2022 and that he could not win his first national title unless he could field a quality defense—not great, necessarily, but reliable. Dependable. Solid.
He knew all this, and he took all of his chips, pushed them to the center of the table, and placed them on Alex Grinch.
Now before we dive into this, there are a few things I should note. First, there’s a certain freedom in having absolutely nothing to lose. When everybody thinks you’re terrible and expects you to get blown out, you can throw caution to the wind. You can fake punt and run quarterback throwbacks. You can play fast and loose with your hair in fire. You can just go out there and have fun. That’s what Arizona State did.
And if you like gallows humor, just keep in mind that if USC keeps playing like it did last night, later this year USC will have that same advantage. It, too, will be a major disappointment that will no longer have anything to play for and will be able to just go out, run around, and not worry about anything.
In some ways, that’s what USC’s defense does much of the time anyway.
Second, playing on the road is different. Oregon almost lost on the road to a bad Texas Tech team. Utah almost lost on the road to a bad Baylor team. Florida State almost lost on the road to a bad Boston College team. Alabama almost lost on the road to a bad South Florida team. Can I stop now? You should have the point.
Third, USC hasn’t lost anything yet. At the end of the year, no team is ever punished for an ugly win. Every championship team has some, but if you win ‘em all, it doesn’t matter that some of them looked like that window scene in There’s Something About Mary.
But—and this is a really big but—if you play ugly a lot, you’re not going to win them all.
A talented team will often get away with turning in an undisciplined, unfocused, garbage performance. But if you do it often enough, you will eventually get burned. With this schedule, more than once.
And last night was ugly. That was a bad offensive performance. But that offense is so talented that even when USC’s offense seems completely unfocused –with penalties, and fumbles, awful red-zone play, and even some bad decisions by the star quarterback—it’s explosive. The running backs had 17 carries for 180 yards. There were the usual schoolyard downfield throws. USC scored 42 points and ran up 535 yards while playing terribly. You can get away with that if you have USC’s offensive talent and a bad opponent.
That offense will have much better games. I wasn’t pleased, but I’m also not worried.
We all know where the concerns are, because we knew them all offseason. And there are some things to like even with the defense. ASU’s offensive line isn’t exactly a powerhouse, but when USC needed its defensive line to get pressure, they got pressure. Seven second-half sacks is not too shabby. And 14 tackles for loss is pretty good. You can see just how much bigger, faster, and more talented that defensive front is.
In fact, over the last five Arizona State drives, here’s the outcome for four of them: an interception; a sack that forced a punt; back-to-back sacks, the second of which caused a fumble and a turnover; and a drive with four sacks that ended on downs. That’s pretty good, no?
And yet you had the other drive. And isn’t there always that other drive when you’re talking about USC’s defense? When the Trojans had gone up two scores and needed a stop to ice the game, everybody’s favorite, plucky Sacramento State star broke two tackles and scored on a 52-yard reception.
That’s infuriating. And infuriatingly common with the USC defense.
Defensively, there was a whole lot of undisciplined nonsense going on out there, and the tackling was atrocious. We’re 17 games into this new administration, USC has played four horrible offenses, and the defensive numbers are somewhere between average and below average. They’re 44th in scoring defense (20 points per game), 75th in rush defense, 69th in total defense, and if they kept a stat for Defense You Can Trust to Make a Play When You Absolutely Must Have One, I suspect you’d have to scroll a long way down the list before finding USC. The Fire Grinch! crowd will get some real momentum from last night’s affair, and not without cause. Would USC’s defense look like this if coached by Utah’s staff? But the question is largely irrelevant now, because Alex Grinch isn’t going anywhere in the middle of the season, and I’m more interested in seeing a successful season.
But, geez, this can be hard to watch sometimes. I’m not sure we can trust the corners still. But I’ll save that until we face one of the devastating passing teams on the schedule—and those are coming. For now, let’s just talk about the running game, because I don’t understand what’s going on there. Let’s look at two first-half plays—both runs on third and long—because I have neither the time nor inclination to analyze that whole defensive effort.
The first play was the first touchdown. As you’ll remember, Caleb Williams was sloppy with the ball and gave ASU possession inside the USC 15. Not great, but that stuff happens. ASU runs two plays for no yards and has a 3rd and 10. Force a field goal there, and it’s actually a big win for USC’s defense. ASU sees that even when they are handed an opportunity on a platter, they can’t do anything. Instead, ASU runs this play:
USC is in a man defense, which is not unusual. It’s important to understand, that when you’re playing a man defense, you are not going to get much run support from the secondary. They’re not looking in the backfield (or at least they’re not supposed to be; sometimes they do). The linebackers here are on the line of scrimmage. At the snap, everybody is in their gap and things look okay, except for one gigantic problem: the backside edge runs upfield six yards and attacks the quarterback. Why? I’m not sure. Did he think that on 3rd and 10 he could ignore his run responsibilities and just play pass, even when it looks very much like a run play? Is he coached to get upfield like that? It happens so often with this team that I wonder if it isn’t coached. If that’s not what the backside edge is supposed to be doing, nobody on USC’s coaching staff seems to correct the problem.
And it is a problem, as you can see clearly. Jamil Muhammad—a guy who did some really nice things last night, by the way—is the contain guy. But you can’t be the contain guy six yards upfield; it leaves an enormous gap. The running back cuts back and walks into the end zone. If Muhammad would have stayed near the line of scrimmage, kept his shoulders square, and shuffled down when the tackle blocked down to close the space, there is no cutback lane, and that play gets blown up. What happened on this play is just fundamentally unsound defensive football, which is way too common for USC. And not from a bad player. Muhammad had eight tackles, a sack, and three tackles for loss. He’s athletic. Aggressive. He can play. But this is undisciplined, garbage run defense. Something we see over and over again.
Now this play:
Again, this is 3rd and 10. A passing down? Maybe. But ASU is at USC’s 46, and they know they need touchdowns, so they have two downs to get the first. This is more like a 2nd and 10 from that perspective. On this play, Anthony Lucas starts to do what I suggested Muhammad should have done: he keeps his shoulders square and starts shuffling down to take away space when the tackle blocks down. But he sees that ASU is pulling two linemen his direction. He has to take on that first pulling lineman and create a mess of bodies on the edge. I’d prefer to see him cut the first guy and create a pile. Instead, he takes the first pulling lineman on up high—and maybe that’s what he’s coached to do—but he doesn’t create a pile. He puts his head across, doesn’t keep his outside arm free, gets hooked, and is driven deep inside, completely taking himself out of the play. Note, too, where Mason Cobb is. Two linemen are pulling and he’s still five or six yards behind the line of scrimmage. Granted, it’s 3rd and 10 and the RPO game makes it so tough on linebackers. But USC is playing man defense, so he’s not getting help from the secondary, and if he’s going to stop a running play, he needs to be on his way by now. He must close the distance. And look what we have at the 4:50 mark. Because Lucas has been taken out of the play, and because Mason Cobb is still three yards behind the line of scrimmage, he’s effectively forced to try to make an open-field tackle. He doesn’t come close. There’s just way too much space. And the result is an easy first down on a basic running play on 3rd and 10.
By the way, you see what the backside edge is doing? Again, we’re way upfield. Is that what they’re being taught to do? If so, it ain’t working.
I don’t understand this. But I do know this: Lincoln Riley talked about not being able to hide the front seven. In other words, USC needed to get better talent up front. They did. That defensive line is far bigger and more athletic. They may not be what Georgia has had the last few years (or what Pete Carroll had some of his years), but it’s a group that is capable of playing sound defense. Bear Alexander is a problem. Solomon Byrd has turned into a legitimate threat off the edge. And Muhammad and Romello Height are athletic, able pass rushers.
And behind them? USC has two linebacker captains on this roster. Two! One of them I don’t recall even playing last night and doesn’t show up in the box score. The other played a bunch and finished with one tackle. One! As far as linebacker captain pairs go, not exactly Duane Bickett and Jack Del Rio. For all their struggles at times, Eric Gentry had nine tackles including one tackle for loss and Tackett Curtis has seven tackles, including two sacks. Raesjon Davis didn’t play, I suppose because Mason Cobb was too valuable to take off the field. If it sounds like I’m beating up on Mason Cobb, I guess I am. But when you’re Second Team All-Big 12, and you transfer to a national title contender, and they immediately make you a captain, you don’t get to play like that. You just don’t.
USC is not a fundamentally sound defense. The corners can’t be trusted, the edge players have no idea how to play the run, the linebackers have been a disappointment, and Alex Grinch seems content to put his guys in tough positions and just hope it all works out.
This is a defense that should be enough to put USC into the playoff. And right now I have no real reason to believe that will happen.
Back to that bet. Lincoln put all of his chips on Alex Grinch. He’ll have a lot of good offenses at USC. But he may never have another Caleb Williams. And he may never have another year where there is no team in the top five that isn’t extremely vulnerable. It’s anybody’s year. But you have to rise up and take it, and that means you have to play competent defense.
Riley hasn’t lost that bet yet; USC is still undefeated; his chips are still sitting on the table. But he also hadn’t played anybody yet, and yet the cracks in the foundation are already showing. It’s his team, his program, his career, his reputation … and therefore his decision. It’s too late to take those chips off the table and put them somewhere else. But if I were him, I would be pretty nervous about that bet.
So new USC gets the Colorado Buffaloes, freshly humiliated and with a little of the air let out of their Cinderella balloon.
We shouldn’t lose sight of just how remarkable Coach Prime’s start has been. Colorado was terrible last year, and just on the basis of his larger-than-life personality alone, the Buffs took over the college football world. Having not beaten anybody of significance, he turned an irrelevant game against a Colorado State team that nobody cares about into one of the most-watched regular season games of all time. He is now able to recruit against the top powers. I’ve had people who don’t even watch college football asking me about them.
And here’s what I tell them: Colorado isn’t very good. They have a really good quarterback who they can’t protect, a small handful of really good skill guys, and a defense that is no match for any focused, skilled offense. Taking Colorado from one of the worst teams in the nation to the sixth or seventh-best team in the Pac-12 in one year is a real accomplishment. But that’s his accomplishment. It’s all he’s done. Colorado is not elite. They’re not good enough to play against the big boys. They’re not even close.
But make no mistake: this Colorado team was humiliated, they’re angry, and they’ll come out throwing haymakers Saturday. And after watching the ASU film, they’ll believe they can win. And why shouldn’t they? If USC can’t handle ASU with ease, why should the Buffs concede the game? They won’t. They’ll be ready. I think USC will be ready. But I’m less sure about that.
Can we close with a silver lining? I’m pretty sure that USC’s coaching staff understands that you should not play with 10 defensive players—even if it sometimes looks like we are—and would not hesitate to get the 11th player on the field before the game-deciding play. Notre Dame fans can’t say that.
On to Boulder….
