What Lincoln Riley had to say about Stanford ahead of their Week 2 matchup

We have officially come full circle as Stanford is set to host what is now a completely different USC team than the one they played a year ago.

After handling the Trojans a year ago, Stanford would trigger what was the beginning of one of the craziest college football years the sport has ever seen. USC would go on to fire Clay Helton and hire offensive mastermind and former Oklahoma coach, Lincoln Riley, as his replacement. A move that changed the landscape of college football, as he would bring in the top transfer class headlined by elite quarterback Caleb Williams and receiver Jordan Addison while also triggering what seemed to be a never ending chain of events.

Fast forward to now, and the Cardinal are now tasked with welcoming Riley and the new look USC program to Pac-12 play. Something that will prove to be a huge challenge for the Cardinal as the No. 10 ranked Trojans who are favored by 8.5 points, and currently have a 74.6% chance to win according to ESPN's FPI. On the bright side for Stanford, they are 2-0 against USC at home in their last couple meetings and have won five out of the last eight matchups.

Stanford will need to tighten up after having some costly mental errors last week, but they do have a legitimate chance to pull off the upset. Something that Riley is fully aware of as he expressed how important their first true road test was when talking to the media.

Let's take a look at what Lincoln Riley had to say about Stanford ahead of their Week 2 matchup

Thoughts on playing at Stanford

Riley:

"We're excited about going and playing on the road for the first conference game," head coach said Tuesday. "As a program, if you want to be at a championship level, you've got to embrace going and playing on the road. These conference road games are like gold."

The importance of stopping the Stanford run game

Riley:

"You're going to have to be clean in the run game, obviously they present a lot of different challenges that way," the head coach said. "We had some moments in this last game where we were [clean in the run game] and some moments where we weren't. We'll need to be more consistent there."

The threat that Tanner McKee poses

"You're facing a really high-level quarterback on top of it," Riley said. "So coverage has got to be sharp. Guys have got to do a good job getting pressure on him. It's going to take a little bit of everybody. You've got to play great team defense against a group like this because they can obviously hurt you both ways."