Musings from Arledge: Lincoln Riley's lost bet
Lincoln Riley hasn’t lost a game yet. But he’s already lost his big bet. And now Lincoln Riley must take on the most difficult schedule in recent USC memory with one hand tied behind his back.
Lincoln Riley bet this season—and to some extent, his career reputation—on Alex Grinch. He decided that last year’s defensive collapse was due to a lack of talent, not a lack of coaching. You can’t hide the front seven, he said.
Now Lincoln Riley has some pretty good players up front. Bear Alexander is a force. Solomon Byrd has been fantastic. Jamil Muhammad and Romello Height are quick off the end. Anthony Lucas is immensely talented. De’jon Benton is turning into a really good football player. There is some depth up front.
I don’t know that USC has the same talent up front that Georgia and Michigan do. But they have more than enough to play competent defense. And yet they don’t.
Maybe you can’t hide a defensive coordinator, either.
Is that too harsh? Fine: show the data that goes the other way. USC is 16-3 under Lincoln Riley. Exactly one of those wins was a game where the defense bailed out the offense. All of those losses (and many of those wins) involved defensive catastrophes.
Lincoln Riley became a head coach, and then became a celebrated head coach, and then became one of the highest-paid coaches in college football, because his offenses move the ball and score points. Every year. Everybody knows the bottom-line numbers: three Heisman winners and an offense that has averaged over 40 points every year as a head coach but one. (Oklahoma averaged 39.1 points per game in 2021.) Riley took over a USC program that was horrific on both sides of the ball and had the best offense in college football in year one. He is as good an offensive coach as you will find.
With offensive firepower like that, Riley doesn’t have to shut people out to win. But he needs competence. Riley’s goal is to win it all, and that means you need to win virtually every week, including against some really good football teams. You cannot consistently beat good teams if you’re terrible on one side of the ball. And for the last five years, Lincoln Riley has entrusted his defense—and this his national title hopes—to Alex Grinch. Here are Alex Grinch’s numbers as a defensive coordinator coming into this season:
| Year | Team | Points Per Game (with national ranking) | Yards Per Game (with national ranking) | Yards Per Play (with national ranking) |
| 2015 | WSU | 28 (67) | 427 (86) | 5.6 (80) |
| 2016 | WSU | 24.8 (37) | 389.6 (47) | 5.7 (68) |
| 2017 | WSU | 27.9 (67) | 338.7 (18) | 5.0 (31) |
| 2018 | Ohio State | 25.5 (45) | 404 (68) | 5.6 (64) |
| 2019 | Oklahoma | 28.3 (67) | 357.8 (34) | 5.4 (51) |
| 2020 | Oklahoma | 23.9 (34) | 373.2 (40) | 5.1 (29) |
| 2021 | Oklahoma | 27.9 (81) | 408.6 (82) | 5.8 (89) |
| 2022 | USC | 29.2 (81) | 423.9 (101) | 6.3 (119) |
| Average ranks | 59.9 | 59.5 | 66.4 |
That’s the guy Lincoln Riley bet on, the guy he thought would give USC a quality defense to go with the best offense in the country. Over the course of eight seasons—five at blue-blood programs—Alex Grinch usually finds himself around number 60 in the nation in the key defensive categories. He’ll be lucky to finish that high this year.
By the way, if you want to get upset, go compare what Alex Grinch’s defenses were doing compared to what USC’s defenses under the last failed regime were doing. They’re very close. Or look at Ohio State’s total defense ranks before Alex Grinch arrived (7th) and after he left (1st) compared to the year he was there (68th).
And now USC is coming off two horrible defensive performances, and having not yet played a good team, the Trojans are giving up more than 400 yards per game already. I hoped coming into this season that this year’s team would be like 2005 USC: great offense and good enough defense to get into the title game. Instead, we’re getting 2022 USC again.
When I sat down to write this article, I intended to analyze some of the key defensive plays of the game, like I did last week. But I can’t. I just can’t. Riley has a generational talent at QB, he has the best offense in the country, and he’s likely to lose two games this year because he sabotaged his season through loyalty to somebody who doesn’t have the track record of success to justify it.
What we saw this week against Colorado was disappointing. But we’ve seen it so many times, shame on us if we’re still surprised. The fans have been beating up on various players, and not without cause. Some of these guys haven’t played very well at times. But last week’s punching bag, Mason Cobb, had 13 tackles, including two tackles for loss, and a pass defensed. The truth is that it’s not always one guy. Instead, it’s a lack of discipline and consistency in executing assignments. It’s bad tackling, including guys routinely leaving their feet when they shouldn’t be. It’s a scheme that is focused on creating penetration but so often leaves enormous running lanes in the process. It’s—to put it quite simply—a defense that week in and week out you cannot trust to make plays for 60 minutes. You know at some point the breakdowns will come, often in an avalanche.
And so here we are. USC is undefeated and ranked in the top 10. It is capable of winning any game left on the schedule. That’s right. The Trojans can beat Notre Dame and Washington and Oregon. It will just take a magnificent performance by the offense. That offense can’t afford a down week—not a single one. Any down week, particularly against those three teams, will be a blowout for the bad guys. Because you can’t trust Alex Grinch and his unit to win a game.
USC has some good defensive players. Don’t tell me that Oregon State and Utah have dramatically more talent on defense than USC does. It’s just not true. They have defenders who play better than USC’s. They’re disciplined, and they’re consistent. And their defensive schemes make you earn your yards and points most of the time.
So Lincoln Riley, the best offensive coach in football, and Caleb Williams, the best player in football, will seek to do the almost impossible: run through a brutal gauntlet of a schedule with a defense that can’t stop anybody. Riley and Williams are very, very good; they may just pull it off. But they’ll have to be amazing, because Lincoln Riley made a bad bet, lost it, and is now forced to win while playing at an enormous disadvantage.
The second-half offense was a disappointment this week. The Trojans became completely one-dimensional in the second half, and the mistakes started to pile up. Yes, they scored a bunch of points and had a bunch of yards. But being that they have to carry the entire team every single week, today’s performance isn’t going to be good enough. Against the better teams on the schedule, USC loses today.
One more tune-up before Murderer’s Row. Arizona hasn’t been good. But that doesn’t really mean much, does it?
I’m frustrated, but Fight On.
