Musings from Arledge: Is this another Lincoln Riley USC team?

So, there’s a chance I might have misled everybody. I predicted one thing; this USC team looks like something else. Many of us expected to see a Big Ten team, the kind of team that is rugged upfront defensively, is comfortable punting and playing field position football, and is satisfied to win games 24-17. 

Instead, it turns out that USC has a Lincoln Riley team. Surprise!

USC has some elite playmakers on offense. Makai Lemon, Ja’Kobi Lane, and Waymond Jordan might not be the best three-headed playmaking monster in the country, but they’d have to be in the discussion. Those guys are elite talents, and Waymond Jordan is the best back USC has had since Ronald Jones, and by the end of this season, I suspect he will be the best USC back since the Pete Carroll era. USC has had a ton of NFL wide receivers over the years, including during the recent dark ages, so I’ll make no such bold claims against Lemon and Lane. Let’s just say they’re the latest in a long line of very good, very dangerous receivers that will leave USC and play a long time in the NFL.

And those three guys are not alone. Eli Sanders is explosive, the tight end room is much improved, there’s young talent at wide receiver … and let’s not forget, King Miller is already a first-ballot Hall of Famer when it comes to fourth-string, walk-on running backs. What is going on?! The coaches and players talk about Miller breaking long runs every day in practice, and now the guy has seven carries for 135 yards and two TD’s in his first two college games. USC’s walk-on has a cheat code. That guy can legitimately play.

I’m not suggesting this offense will be a top-ten group in the country. It’s way too early to say any such thing. The offensive line has not been tested by a real defense, so the primary question mark this season remains unanswered. And while Jayden Maiava has played well, he also hasn’t been put in a situation where he has to fit the ball in tight holes while under pressure. At some point, he will be forced to do that, and that’s when his decision-making and accuracy will be tested. 

But I’ve seen enough to know that USC’s offense will be dangerous and not reliant on any one guy. And while we have to discount the huge numbers so far this season in light of the weak opposition, most teams in the country start the season with two cream puffs. That kind of schedule is unusual for USC, but it’s not unusual for major football powers. 

Just look at all the top-25 teams who look like garbage on offense even against bad opponents. Powerhouses like Georgia (terrible offensively against Austin Peay!), Clemson (struggled at home against Troy), LSU (the offense did very little against Louisiana Tech), and Texas (didn’t look great offensively for much of the game against San Jose State) show that it’s not a given that a big-name team with blue chip talent will just roll through weak preseason opponents and put giant numbers on the board. 

Even against weak opponents, 676 yards and 66 points per game are huge numbers, and that’s what USC is averaging right now. (Not surprisingly, those are the best numbers in the country.) 

And while we shouldn’t pretend that Missouri State and Georgia Southern are good teams – they’re not – Missouri State did beat Marshall yesterday, and Georgia Southern will probably win seven or eight games this year in the Sun Belt. They’re bad, but they’re not the worst teams in the country.

That would be UCLA. 

That’s the good news. The bad news is that USC isn’t as good defensively as many of us expected them to be. The defensive line is decent, but only decent, and it hurts to write that in light of the expectations. There are some solid pieces. Anthony Lucas is a good player. So is Kam Fountain. Devan Thompkins is probably a good player – the USC coaches talk as if they believe he is – although if you remember him doing anything yesterday you have a better memory than I do. I’m still wondering if he suited up. There are young guys like Jide Abasiri, Floyd Boucard, and Jahkeem Stewart who might develop into very good players. And there are lots of big bodies inside. The USC defensive line is in better shape than it has been for the last few years.

But USC does not have a single elite defensive lineman. Not one. Elite defensive linemen win one-on-one blocks consistently, particularly against subpar offensive lines like Missouri State’s and Georgia Southern’s. That we have not seen.

The hope coming into this season was that USC would have a very good defense led by an even better defensive line, a group up front strong enough that it could hide depth or experience issues in the back seven. That’s not going to happen. Two games in, we know that USC will have a competent defensive line group, nothing more.

So the linebackers need to grow up in a hurry. There isn’t a lot of experience in that room, and USC needs that group to react much faster. The same is true in the secondary. USC needs players like Chasen Johnson to become veterans in a hurry, because the coverage needs to tighten up and the communication mistakes—two huge mistakes for big touchdown passes in consecutive weeks, both by experienced players—need to stop. And it would help if all of that discipline we’ve been hearing about since Trumain Carroll’s arrival would lead to less penalties, especially a repeat of the same huge penalty over and over. 

There is some good news. Many of USC’s most talented players are young, and this is still an elite defensive staff. The defense will get better. As USC gets into the heart of its schedule, the rotation will tighten and only the best players will get snaps. That will also help. There are guys playing over the first two weeks that really shouldn’t be on the field, at least not yet. I won’t offer names because a lot of those guys are young and may turn into very good players. It’s not fair to beat up a kid who’s just not ready. 

And, if you take a look around the Big Ten and college football more generally, there are a lot of mediocre offenses out there. USC’s defense will have some very good weeks and will make some big plays every week. But if you were expecting a defense that can walk into South Bend or Eugene and control the action, you might want to reset your expectations.

USC will likely smash Purdue next week. That doesn’t sound like much, but considering how badly USC played on the road in the Big Ten last year, it actually will mean something. Purdue is 2-0 against bad opponents and is averaging about 360 yards a game. That offense is no juggernaut. But it is a road game, and Purdue will have (marginally) better players than the first two opponents. And then the warmup games will be over. We will be back to playing Lincoln Riley football. Score a lot, because you’re going to need to.

The best Lincoln Riley teams have offensive playmakers that Riley gets into space. They get a lot of yards and a lot of points. Most weeks, I think that is what will happen this year. And the best Riley teams are not defensive powerhouses but will make enough big plays to get the stops the offense needs. 

Can USC win that way? Of course. Lincoln Riley has done it before. Can it win on the road against ranked teams that way? Hmmm. Let’s see how that O-line looks against Big Ten opponents the next couple of weeks. Let’s see how Jayden Maiava responds when better athletes force him to make decisions faster and fit the ball in smaller spaces. I’m cautiously optimistic. I know I wouldn’t want to have to game plan against Lemon, Lane, and Jordan. 

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A few notes on specific plays.

Bishop Fitzgerald became an instant Trojan folk hero after the pick-six in the opener and absurd PFF grade. Let’s pump the brakes. I think he’s good, but I want to see what kind of man coverage player he is, since Lynn demands that from his safeties a lot.

This was a 3rd-and-1 play with USC in man coverage and Georgia Southern with twins to the left, one back, a tight end to the right, and another tight end as a wing right next to him:

USC chose not to match up its corners with the two wideouts and instead had Fitzgerald take the slot receiver in loose man coverage. Loose man is tough, especially on 3rd-and-1 where you don’t want to give up an easy first down and have to be ready to break on the ball quickly. Why not have Fitzgerald in a tighter man coverage? Probably because USC was concerned about a rub play and there was no deep safety help. Everybody else was within five yards of the line of scrimmage, presumably to disguise where the pressure was going to come from. The answer was … nowhere, really. USC rushed the five defensive linemen and the other four guys were irrelevant on that deep pass. Abasiri badly beat his man and got pressure despite it being a quick throw. Nobody else was in the play.

Fitzgerald was in a good spot and could have turned his head to find the ball. Why didn’t he? Usually the defensive back doesn’t turn his head when he’s uncomfortable with his positioning or is afraid the receiver will run past him. It didn’t look like Fitzgerald was getting left in the dust, but Cobb is speedy and it looked like he was starting to gain a step right as Fitzgerald had to decide whether to turn or not. My take: Fitzgerald was uncomfortable with whether he could stay with him. And if your safety is worried about that, then bringing only five with no deep help and leaving the corner on the tight end might be a mistake. If Fitzgerald wondered whether he could run with Cobb, maybe D’Anton Lynn should be wondering the same thing. A safety on a slot receiver is usually a good matchup for the defense. A safety on a slot with no deep help is usually a gift to the defense. USC may want to consider having a better man coverage guy on the slot or deep help in the future.

P.S. Clay being Clay on that silly PAT attempt.

P.P.S. Georgia Southern had a guy locked in loose man on Makai Lemon in the slot in a very similar situation a short time later (other than down and distance), and it ended badly, too. As it will most of the time. 

The pass interference call on Chasen Johnson against Cobb was nonsense:

But if Johnson had gotten his head around—and he was in perfect position—it never would have happened. But if this were easy, you wouldn’t see it come up every Saturday and Sunday. 

This one is interesting:

Georgia Southern has twins to the right, a wide out split narrowly on the left, and an H back in a wing position right next to him. They motion the slot receiver just before the snap, which raises the possibility of some kind of jet sweep, shovel pass, or other quick play to the outside to the left. USC doesn’t send anybody with the motion guy, which usually suggests zone coverage, but it you look at the corner at the top of the screen, you can tell he’s playing man because of his eyes before the snap. With the tight-set wideout, the H back, the running back, and the slot receiver coming in motion, Georgia Southern has four receivers to their left-hand side. And, as you would guess from the other corner’s eyes, the corner at the bottom of the screen (Braylon Conley) is also in man. He runs with his guy up the field. Christian Pierce is in man on the number two receiver (the H back), and I believe the free safety has the motion man (although he’s barely in the screen so it’s hard to see). Eric Gentry appears to have the running back in man coverage, but I think he’s fooled by the motion guy who he believes will be getting the ball quickly on the outside and gets wide very quickly as a result. By the time he figures out what’s happening, he can’t recover to get back to his man who is running vertically. Nice play design and execution by Georgia Southern. And if I’m reading it right, Gentry might have been trying to do too much and missed his assignment.

Let’s close with the 3^rd and 2 play from Georgia Southern with the score 21-6:

This conversion leads directly to the blown coverage touchdown to bring Georgia Southern within a score. Because we don’t have the view from behind, there’s a lot we can’t see here. One thing is clear: Keeshawn Silver is too high. It might be because there was some confusion just before the snap. You can see that he communicates with Fountain just before the snap; he might not have been ready. Fountain does a nice job getting penetration and delivering a blow to the tackle. Braylon Shelby does a nice job on the other side. Eric Gentry is fooled by the pitch—and to be fair, he is the contain man and can’t crash too hard with that outside threat there) and can only make the play after the running back gets the first down.

The part that confused me is what Desman Stephens is doing. This is 3^rd and 2 with a back set very close to the QB. You have to expect a quick handoff there, which is exactly what he gets. And he isn’t fooled by the fake pitch, because he moves the opposite direction from the fake pitch. So you have an obvious short-yardage situation, you have everybody in the backfield going to his left, and Stephens takes a step to his right, getting caught in trash and not filling the hole. If Stephens just runs to grass and fills that hole, this is a stop.

When I talked above about the young linebackers needing to grow up quickly, this is what I’m talking about. If that’s a more experienced guy, the play probably gets stopped for no gain. If it’s Groots or Tatupu, I can virtually guarantee it. Ask Adrian Peterson. This play was decently defended except the inside linebacker takes himself out of the play.