USC Football: Writer "Flunks" Lincoln Riley Despite Trojans Victory

A poor performance all around for the Trojans.

Even though your USC Trojans nabbed a 42-28 win over the Arizona State Sun Devils last weekend, they did so while looking like a mediocre team. This wasn't the team that many were expecting to show up, and it saw them allow the Sun Devils to hand around.

USC was underwhelming in this game, and it was a strange occurrence. They came into this game on a bye week, so you would have thought things would have been smoother.

Whenever a team underperforms, the blame falls typically at the feet of the head coach. So, the blame should start with USC coach Lincoln Riley. Matt Zemek of Trojans Wire gave Riley a failing grade for the performance this past weekend.

“Lincoln Riley flunked this test. After an off week on September 16, penalties and mistakes were supposed to be cleaned up. Instead, the opposite happened: The problem grew worse.”

Per Matt Zemek of Trojans Wire

A win is a win, but this was a shaky one at best. The guys weren't ready to play this game, which showed how they played against an undermanned squad.

“This Arizona State team was missing 10 starters and four starting offensive linemen. It wasn’t a good team to begin with, and it was missing lots of key players at important positions. USC was favored by 35 points. ASU had the ball early in the fourth quarter with a chance to take the lead.”

Per Matt Zemek of Trojans Wire

At times, it looked like the Trojans couldn't stop the Sun Devils on defense. It led to very poor effort from the defensive unit and brought back memories of how the defense was last season.

It was a poor performance all around by the Trojans, and it has left people wondering exactly what type of team USC is. They looked extremely dominant through the first few weeks of the season against weaker competition, but this game left some things uncertain moving forward.

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