Lincoln Riley is the fourth-highest-paid coach in college football, according to USA Today’s database. It’s a pretty safe bet to assume USC is in the top 10 — and probably closer to the top five — in assistant coach salaries.
Theoretically, the return for that sort of pay should be top-10 results. It’s Year 3 of Riley’s tenure. His roster. His staff. His program. His vision. This probably sounds like a broken record, but Riley is simply not delivering on the investment USC made in him.
That much has been clear for a few weeks, but it should be crystalized for everyone now after the Trojans suffered a catastrophic 29-28 loss to Maryland on Saturday night.
USC (3-4, 1-4 Big Ten) is good enough to have been in every game. The Trojans have led in the fourth quarter in each of their losses. All of those games have been winnable.
But USC keeps faltering again and again. This time, with two minutes left, Maryland blocked Michael Lantz’s 41-yard field goal attempt. The Trojans didn’t block correctly up front and instead of leading 31-22 in the game’s final stages, USC was forced to send its defense back on the field. Less than a minute later, Maryland scored the go-ahead touchdown. The offense made it across midfield but couldn’t march into field goal range.
Final. pic.twitter.com/FV5InVZSg2
— USC Football ✌️ (@uscfb) October 19, 2024
Afterward, Riley was asked why USC has struggled to close out games.
“I don’t know,” he said.
It doesn’t really matter what Riley says. What matters is that he finds solutions to whatever his team is failing to accomplish on the field. To this point, he hasn’t done that.
And there lies the problem. Week after week, it’s USC’s defense failing to come up with a fourth-down stop when it absolutely has to. It’s the offense faltering in a critical moment when it has an opportunity to salt the game away. It’s the special teams making a massive mistake at a crucial juncture.
This team just finds ways to lose games.
“We’ve been a good enough team to have a chance to win every game but we haven’t been quite good enough to separate,” Riley told reporters after the loss, “and when you put yourself in these moments you are going to have to make some plays to beat somebody. Especially on the road. You’re going to have to make that field goal or make that fourth-down tackle or make that catch or throw or block or whatever it is because it’s not going to be handed to you.”
I know what the recruiting rankings suggest. I know where USC is ranked in the 247Sports Team Talent Composite. And I know the Trojans have more talent than Minnesota and Maryland. But I also know USC is not talented enough to separate from its opponents. Not where it matters — in the trenches — and not in the way Riley described above. And even if this team is more talented than the Golden Gophers or Terrapins, it’s not by a decisive enough margin that it can make sloppy mistakes and get away with it.
Riley’s had three years to build this roster. It’s on him if the Trojans aren’t talented enough right now. The talk about how he can’t wave a magic wand should probably stop. There are not a lot of reasons to believe USC will be dramatically more talented in Year 4. The Trojans’ 2025 recruiting class is ranked in the top 10 nationally, but counting on true freshmen is a fool’s errand.
Keep in mind next year’s schedule features road games at Notre Dame and Oregon and a home game with Michigan.
If USC does manage to upgrade its roster in a significant way, it’ll still have to address its attention-to-detail problem. It’s been lacking throughout Riley’s tenure. Whether it’s Mario Williams failing to fair catch a critical kickoff against Tulane in the Cotton Bowl two years ago, John Humphrey and Kamari Ramsey failing to tackle Michigan running back Kalel Mullings — which turned a 15-yard gain into a 63-yard run that set up the Wolverines’ game-winning score — in September or the missed block on Lantz’s field goal attempt Saturday night.
Coaches often say, “You’re either coaching it or allowing it to happen.” Those sorts of errors are a reflection of the head coach, just like all these close losses are. USC has blown 14-point leads in each of the past two weeks. Riley has lost 12 games as the Trojans coach. His teams have blown a 14-point lead in five of them.
Sure, each one can be explained away in a vacuum, but these losses have become a pattern. One that can’t be explained away.
“We’re doing a lot of the heavy lifting, which is put yourself to win games against good teams,” Riley said, “but the inability to finish them off — it eats at you.”
At 3-4, USC has fallen below .500 for the first time in Riley’s tenure. He has to change something structurally with the way he runs the program. There will naturally be some who will call for his firing, but unless those calls come with about $80 million, that is not realistic.
So Riley and USC are likely in this together for a while. The Trojans coach can’t double down on how he is running the program. He’s 11-11 since the 11-1 regular season in 2022. Whatever he’s doing is not working. That sort of reflection will likely take place once the offseason rolls around. But why wasn’t that done last offseason, after a disastrous 7-5 regular season?
The culture seems better than last season, but that’ll be tested over these next few weeks.
The Trojans couldn’t look any more disinterested last season in the rivalry game against UCLA. So Riley has to prove he can keep this team motivated.
It’s late October and USC already has nothing to play for but pride. That’s just not where things are supposed to be in Year 3.
(Photo: Greg Fiume / Getty Images)