- Southern California football coach Lincoln Riley is under pressure after back-to-back disappointing seasons, including a 7-6 record in 2024.
- Quarterback Jayden Maiava, who took over late in the 2024 season, returns as the starter and has focused on improving his leadership and consistency.
- USC faces a critical mid-season stretch that will likely determine whether they are a contender or pretender.
LOS ANGELES — As Penn State’s Ryan Barke sealed an overtime victory against Southern California on a game-winning field goal, Trojans coach Lincoln Riley dropped to his knees.
It was another game that slipped through his fingers. For the third time in four games during the 2024 college football season, USC had lost a fourth-quarter lead, causing the Trojans to fall to 3-3 and ending any realistic chance of making the College Football Playoff.
Afterwards, it was Riley who took full responsibility for it.
“We’ve got to be able to finish, and it all falls on my shoulders at the end,” Riley said postgame. “That’s part of why they call me head coach.”
All of those things are true. That’s why there’s now a lot more pressure on those shoulders.
Riley heads into what is surely a make-or-break season for the Trojans, desperate to restore their status as a nationally relevant program while their head coach gets his mojo back.
As painful the Penn State loss was, the misery didn’t end there for USC. The following week, it strangely blew a 14-point fourth quarter lead at Maryland, dropping Riley’s season record to below .500 for the first time in his career.
The Trojans were able finish 7-6 with a bowl victory, but that’s not a successful season for USC given its lofty history and considering how much it pays Riley. The stumble comes after Southern California went 8-5 in 2024 following a 6-0 start. Those 13 losses in the past two seasons are three more than he had combined in five years at Oklahoma before his surprising exit to Los Angeles.
Heat rising for USC, Lincoln Riley
Closing out games would certainly help.
“What last year revealed is there’s not any part of the program that’s not pretty good, or on the doorstep of being pretty good. If not, you don’t have the chance to win damn near every single game you played in the fourth quarter,” Riley said. “Are we working on in-game situations and emphasizing that, talking about that? Of course, we are.
“But the reality is, every part of this program needs to be a little bit better to take the steps of where we want to be, and I think that has been a huge emphasis point.”
For all the talk about its inability to finish games, how USC ended the season may have turned it around. It was the team down by double-digits in the fourth quarter of the Las Vegas Bowl against Texas A&M when it completed a comeback win.
That victory was orchestrated by quarterback Jayden Maiava, who transferred from UNLV prior to the season and didn’t win the job in fall camp. But with the season falling apart, Riley benched starter Miller Moss and handed the keys to Maiava and he finished the season 3-1.
Keys to USC offense belong to Jordan Maiava
Riley could have easily said thanks to Maiava and sought another quarterback in the transfer portal. But he wasn’t ready to ask for the keys back, believing Maiava is his guy.
Maiava isn’t your typical USC quarterback. He’s not much of a Hollywood person. He’s from the Pālolo neighborhood of Honolulu and the first Polynesian starting quarterback in Trojans history. He’s mostly quiet, but now with a full offseason knowing he’s the guy in charge, his actions have become loud.
“We challenged him – in a lot of ways – to come out of his shell and really take ownership of this group, and he’s done that,” Riley said. “You’ve just seen more and more as times gone on, he’s been more vocal with the guys. Just kind of his attitude, his confidence, his kind of the swagger that he carries himself with is just very, very different.”
In order to better understand Riley’s offense, Maiava spent the offseason studying people that mastered it, watching highlights of Kyler Murray, Baker Mayfield and Caleb Williams all during their Heisman Trophy campaigns. He trained at 3DQB, a camp renowed for training elite quarterbacks like Tom Brady, Matthew Stafford and Drew Brees.
Southern California offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Luke Huard said Maiava is extremely hard on himself, and one thing they had to focus on in the offseason was to be at peace with things that don’t go his way. To help that, Maiava read “Winning: The Unforgiving Race to Greatness” by Tim Grover. It taught him to keep a neutral mindset of never getting too high or too low at critical moments. Mix that with the meditation he does and Maiava is a much different person than the one that was just trying to stay afloat at the end of the season.
“He knows what this team now needs out of him, and he knows how to give it to him,” Riley said.
USC football made other offseason changes to fix problems
Other changes were needed, and it started in the weight room. Riley let go of his longtime staff member Bennie Wylie and named Trumain Carroll his new strength coach.
The changes were night and day for some players, as Carroll has stated players needed to earn the right to run the steps inside the prestigious Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Coaches and players have applauded Carroll, believing he has brought accountability and discipline into the program.
There’s also the witty Rob Ryan, returning to college coaching after 25 years in the NFL to coach the team’s linebackers and assist Trojans defensive coordinator D’Anton Lynn.
Lynn said Ryan’s experience is something that can’t be replaced, and while the college game has sure changed a lot since he’s last been in it, Ryan has brought his fun yet intense nature to a defense that made great leaps in 2024.
“It’s on now,” Ryan said. “There’s no excuse. We got to be great, and I know we will be.”
The journey to greatness for USC begins with rather easy start in September that will have the Trojans as significant favorites in their first four games.
But it’s very similar to last season, when USC looked like a real contender in its first two games before the heartbreaker at Michigan eventually pushed the season off the rails. September ends with a road trip to College Football Playoff contender Illinois. The Trojans get a week off before Michigan comes to Los Angeles, and then have to play at rival Notre Dame, where they haven’t won since 2011.
By the end of October, we’ll know where USC stands. The Trojans could be 7-0 and a national championship contender. But they could be also be 4-3 and out ouf the playoff race that would further increase the heat on Riley.
So we’ll find out who USC really is. Last season offers some optimism. Five of the six losses were by seven points or less and holding late leads would have made for a completely different outlook.
The Trojans don’t want another season of ‘what if?’ They believe they’ve made the necessary changes to do so.