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How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat? How can you compete for championships if you don’t have a championship defense?
USC just keeps trying to bend them. Trying to break them. As if universal laws don’t apply to the Trojans.
In each of Lincoln Riley’s four seasons at the helm here, he’s trotted out impressive offenses and unimpressive defenses and — surprise, surprise — gotten the same result each time: something short of the College Football Playoff.
Riley’s teams have averaged more yards per play in his tenure than any other team in the nation.
But it hasn’t mattered much, because the best that a USC team has ranked defensively in that span was last year, when the Trojans gave up 23 points per game — 51st in the nation. That left them 9-4 after losing to Texas Christian in the Alamo Bowl.
USC quarterback Jayden Maiava passes for 286 yards and two touchdowns to spearhead No. 14 USC’s 42-26 season-opening victory over San José State.
Now we’ll find out whether in Season 5, Riley’s Trojans have a defense on par with the offense.
Whether this season, with Gary Patterson serving as USC’s third defensive coordinator in Riley’s tenure, will be different.
They said so leading up to Saturday’s season-opening 42-26 victory over San José State, but the game certainly didn’t sell anyone on it.
No, USC’s win over a Spartans team that’s incorporating 48 new players isn’t going to definitively tell us anything.
But with Patterson on the USC sideline for the first time, gesticulating and sweating in the coaches’ all-black attire, it did drop some concerning clues.
In 90-plus-degree heat, that ’fit was questionable. So too was his defense, at times.
In other moments, reasons for optimism: The Trojans pitched a first-half shutout. There was the play in which freshman defensive end Luke Wafle ran through two Spartans blockers like a hot knife through butter. Linebackers coach Mike Ekeler’s guys hit and hit hard.
