Following USC’s loss to Oregon at the LA Memorial Coliseum on Saturday, I’m stuck with the thought that USC is not a bad football team but a Lincoln Riley football team. And Lincoln Riley football hasn't played for a national title, let alone won one, or won a single college football playoff game. Riley’s teams have been middling, mid.
And, even more disgusting for fans of Riley’s Oklahoma and USC teams, his teams shrink against a clear-and-obvious contender on the opposing sideline instead of proving they could, eventually, win the national title. Saturday night featured such a chance for Riley against Dan Lanning and Oregon, but Saturday night against Lanning's Ducks, Riley’s team lost a game that felt exactly like the kind it should win. But in a second half shootout, against an (extraordinary) backup quarterback — and entering a season where Riley himself even said this is the best team and best alignment with USC administration he’s ever had — the Trojans could not keep the Ducks from dashing the belief that this USC is any different from any other Lincoln Riley team.
It’s not just the 41-27 loss in Los Angeles. It's the quintessential way in which Riley's team lost. It was the way he’s lost so many others as head coach: with a defense that can’t keep up with his explosive offense, a defense that plays knowing the offense is not likely to be on the field for long, a defense that will watch its offense score knowing that its job isn’t to pitch shutouts but to keep the opposition just one point weaker on the scoreboard.
That is a nearly impossible way to win national championships and antithetical to complimentary football. Teams that cannot play complimentary football do not win national titles. Last season's Trojans defense finished averaging 23.0 points and 350.8 yards allowed per game, the fewest in both categories since Riley took over.
Progress is good, but let's not pretend those are small numbers. This season, Riley’s defense has given up at least 26 points in four out of five games this season and its opponents are currently averaging 354.8 yards a game. And now, that defense has its own drama after Desman Stephens II's dirty hit on Oregon starting quarterback Dante Moore, who was hit so viciously he was immediately taken to a hospital and diagnosed with a concussion.
As for Riley himself, he will probably never shake that his exit from Oklahoma is one of the pillars holding up the story of his legacy and a foreshadowing of the expectations to come — and his not meeting them, again. In his last press conference as head coach at Oklahoma, Riley made his job seem like one where he lived for the players. Players who fought for him.
Players who sacrificed for him. Players who wanted to win a national championship with him. "I’m heartbroken for our players," Riley said in 2021 following a 37-33 loss to Oklahoma State in the last edition of the Bedlam series.
"It’s a horrible feeling, that’s the only way I can describe it. We've had a chance to win this league six years in a row, and we're not gonna have a chance to do that this year. It's a gut punch.
I hate it for our players. They fought their [expletive] off tonight, they really did. We had guys laying it on the line, we had guys playing hurt, we had a couple guys that had the flu and probably shouldn't even have been out there." He even addressed rumors around his potential exit as head coach at Oklahoma.
"I’m not gonna be the next head coach at LSU. I have no concerns about our administration, our [athletics director], or our president. We've been through a lot together.
This isn't our first rodeo together. We always have conversations about the future. With all that’s changing right now in the college landscape, all that's getting ready to change for us as at some point here.
"When we transition into a new conference, those are always conversations that we're going to have, and we'll be having those yearly, no matter. All of us are trying to make this place better and make this program better. You don't do that without working together and conversing with each other.
We're going to continue to do that. We work well together, and we're going to keep working well together." Less than 24 hours later, he accepted the job he’s had for the last five years at USC. And that was devastating for at least one of the players Riley claimed to hurt for after a loss that crushed any chance of the Sooners reaching the College Football Playoff in 2021.
"Oh, I was heartbroken, man," former Oklahoma defensive end Isaiah Thomas told me. "But it's just more so how he left," he added, "telling us that he got the call after the game, thought about it overnight, slept on it, made the decision that day. So that kind of rubbed me the wrong way." Such was — is — the feeling for many, especially after Riley took what would become the 2022 Heisman Trophy winner with him from Norman to USC and began the arduous task of returning the Trojans to their early 21st century glory.
Remember, that’s why USC hired Riley, and that is the reason Riley chose USC: to win national championships — plural. Having made the CFP four times as a coach at Oklahoma and three times as a head coach, the thought was he’d have USC back in the CFP in short order. Surely, it wouldn’t be long before the Trojans were not just one of the teams to beat but the team to beat in this modern era of the sport.
He is the best developer of quarterbacks in the sport with three Heisman Trophy and three first No. 1 overall draft selections. He is renowned as a play-caller for an offensive scheme that is more explosive than a struck match in a warehouse full of gasoline-soaked fireworks.
But the glaring weakness on every team he has head-coached is the same this year as it has been in years past: Even with a College Football Hall of Famer calling the defense in Gary Patterson, Riley’s team has allowed 25 points or more in three of its first four games, including 35 to a Rutgers team we all believe be next-to-terrible in a one-score game. The only good news for Riley and USC fans heading into Week 5 is that this loss to Oregon does not count them out of the College Football Playoff. It also might not count them out of making the Big Ten championship game to better qualify for the postseason tournament.
Of course, they’ll have to go through Ohio State, Penn State, a newly plucky Wisconsin, Indiana and UCLA to do it. And they might. The bad news for USC fans, though, isn't news at all.
It’s a feeling. It’s the same sickening feeling Oklahoma fans had at the end of each CFP game Riley coached for it: This team isn’t good enough to win the national title, and a Riley team might never be.
