USC Football: Lincoln Riley Excoriates Himself For Miserable Trojans Finish To 2023

USC dropped five of its last six contests.

The USC Trojans regular season came to a frustrating end on Saturday, as the team dropped their rivalry game against the crosstown UCLA Bruins. The Trojans looked disinterested the entire time, and UCLA took advantage to seal the win.

The loss marked the fifth time in six games that the Trojans were defeated, and USC finished their regular season with a record of 7-5. It's a far cry from what many expected this team to do before the season started, and it has been a long year all around. 

Head coach Lincoln Riley didn't make any excuses after the fact, and took blame for how the season went down. 

“There’s no excuses. It’s below what we expect here, it’s below the standard, and I’ve got to do a much better job. I own all that and I’m going to fight my ass off in every single way to make sure this thing gets to where it’s supposed to be.”

Per Bill Plaschke of The Los Angeles Times

This is one of the few times that Riley has taken responsibility this year for the struggles of the team. They underperformed mightily, and it falls on his shoulders as the head coach.

USC came into the year with potential College Football Playoff hopes, but they didn't even contend for the Pac-12 title. Losing to UCLA was the cherry on top of a disappointing year for this team, Riley knows that it won't be tolerated from the outside.

“To not give yourself a chance like today, it’s unacceptable,” Riley said. “So I’ve got to be better. There’s no way to look at this and say I did any kind of a good job and got the result that we did in the second half of the season. So I’ve got to be better in every single way possible.”

Per Bill Blaschke of The Los Angeles Times

The Trojans will have a long offseason to think about what went wrong, and they'll need to fix their issues. As USC heads for the Big-10 next season, things will need to change. They will need to play with more physicality and build out a better defense, otherwise, more of the same will happen.

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