This season is officially worse than last, USC finished its regular season with a 6-6 record and is likely destined for a minor bowl in the desert wasteland.
Remember how last year’s 8-5 season felt like it was down?
Well, things have gotten messy at USC to the point where the infamous Clay Helton era, in retrospect, is starting to look half-decent.
After Saturday’s 49-35 loss to No. 5 Notre Dame at the Coliseum, Lincoln Riley is 25-14 as USC’s coach. In the same role, Helton was 28-11 through his first 39 games.
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Once seen as a savior, Riley trapped USC in a cycle of mediocrity. His shortcomings prevented the Trojans from even dreaming of realizing their championship ambitions. His eight-figure annual salary pretty much guarantees he won’t be fired anytime soon.
A program defined by championships runs the risk of becoming irrelevant when hope is absent, and USC is hopeless right now. If there is a way out of his purgatory, no one can see it, the way forward obscured by mounting defeats and a dearth of top talent.
“Finish 6-6 and you really have no idea what we are?” former USC quarterback Matt Leinart posted on social media. “Who are we? There is no identity. We have good players. Need to recruit harder. Frustrated like anyone else. You want USC to get back to being a contender. Don’t think we’re close at this point.”
Another former Trojans quarterback, Matt Barkley, was more succinct.
“This,” Barkley wrote, “is not USC football.”
This is USC football now, and it could be USC football for a while. Riley certainly questioned whether he had the chops to clean up his own personal Chernobyl. This is the same thin-skinned coach who shut down the media practice this year, the same one who suspended a New Group Southern California reporter last year for allegedly violating the program’s media policy.
After the Notre Dame loss, Riley was asked why he was confident USC could fulfill its mandate to compete for championships. Riley wouldn’t say.
“This game ended 20 minutes ago,” Riley said. “We have time to get here. I know I can answer all of them. That’s part of the head coach’s job. I don’t avoid it. But this is about this team and this moment, these guys playing their last game here at the Coliseum.
Read more: Do front offices see USC’s Lincoln Riley as a future NFL coach?
“I could sit here for an hour and talk about things that I know are happening in this program. I could read all the statistics. I could show you the equipment. I could show you the recruitment. I can show you the staff. I could go on for an hour about this, but I don’t think now is the time.’
Riley’s approach almost certainly didn’t lead to a wave of condescending media coverage of USC’s seniors, and it certainly didn’t address the concerns of the tens of thousands of loyal fans who packed the Coliseum, so what did the coach do other than substitute himself for an uncomfortable but entirely necessary line of questioning?
While praising quarterback Jayden Maiava, Riley slipped in another reference to the difficulty of USC’s schedule, echoing the sentiment he’s shared all season that his team’s record is a reflection of its opposition.
The Trojans have never been shut out this season, including Saturday. They led 7-0; they equalized at 14:14 and 21:21. Until Irish cornerback Christian Gray intercepted a Maiava pass and returned it 99 yards for a touchdown with 3 minutes, 39 seconds left in the game, the Trojans trailed by just a touchdown, 35-28.
The next five losses were by 19 points.
The Trojans were in every game they played. But their inability to win those games pointed to another, potentially more troubling problem: a lack of playmakers.
Maiava threw a few passes that, while difficult to catch, would have been pulled in by the likes of Jordan Addison, Drake London, Amon-Ra St. Brown or Michael Pittman Jr. The Trojans do not have such a player. One catch here, one catch there and the Trojans could win a few more games.
Is it a recruitment problem? Is this a problem in player development?
Either way, it’s a Lincoln Riley problem, which means it’s a USC problem.
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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.