Luca Evans (OC Register)  —  LOS ANGELES — The only thing unmistakably different on Monday, really, was that USC’s players trotted out past reporters from Howard Jones Field under the night sky and not the late-afternoon sun.

There was nothing to change, drastically, outside of shifting media availability from Tuesday’s practice to Monday on a short week, with the team set to host Rutgers (4-3 overall, 1-3 Big Ten) on Friday night. Nothing to fix, even as these Trojans sit in their most confounding stretch of the Lincoln Riley era. They are 3-4 overall (1-4 Big Ten), and yet have outscored their opponents by 58 points, and dropped those four games by a combined 14 points. There is no central issue in this, Riley pointed out Monday night.

“The obvious thing everyone is going to say is, you’ve gotta finish games better,” the head coach said. “Uh, no (expletive). But why haven’t we?”

Anything that his staff saw that wasn’t functioning at a high level, Riley explained later, they were “aggressively addressing.”

What they’re not addressing: their starting quarterback.

“We’ve had a myriad of different issues,” Riley said. “I don’t see one central issue like it’s this position group or this player or this scheme or this coach. Like they’re not doing this well and that’s why we haven’t closed out these games. We’ve sprung some leaks in different places, and we’ve got to keep coaching and keep progressing. Anything that we see that isn’t functioning at a high level or heading that way, we’re aggressively addressing it, and we’ll do anything we have to do to continue to plug these leaks and get better.”

As USC has closed off practice to media ahead of Friday’s game, it seemed possible, in a hint of gamesmanship, that Riley could be playing his cards close to the vest in a QB1 swap. But when asked if junior Miller Moss was still USC’s starter this week, on Monday, Riley’s eyebrows furrowed with apparent confusion – as if surprised at the suggestion he would consider rolling with anyone else.

“Of course,” Riley responded, voice pitching up in muted exclamation. “100%.”

Three short weeks ago, Moss spun his way to his moment in the sun, capping a four-touchdown performance with a contact-absorbing pirouette into the end zone against Wisconsin. Early returns on his Holiday Bowl follow-up, largely, had impressed, Moss racking up eight touchdowns against just two interceptions in his first four games.

But cycles of cries from USC’s fan base for UNLV transfer Jayden Maiava have intensified with each week since, the patience and adulation for Moss’ perseverance in Riley’s quarterback room long gone after three increasingly devastating losses.

Moss finished 23 for 38 with two interceptions in USC’s loss to Minnesota; in the two weeks since, he has thrown two game-changing interceptions, first a turnover at the end of regulation against Penn State and then a third-quarter momentum killer at Maryland.

And Moss, after slouching in visible defeat after Saturday’s postgame press conference, spoke to reporters on Monday with broad-shouldered bite.

“No, I mean, I have a small circle of people whose opinions I care about,” he said, when asked if it had been challenging to filter outside noise. “Everyone else, you know, say what they will. It’s part of the job.”

The mistakes, certainly, have hurt. But Riley – part of that circle, naturally – continued to emphasize Monday that Moss is the player who has put USC in position “to win all seven of these.” Entrusted with more responsibility to carry a quick-hit and intermediate game through the air than Caleb Williams ever had, Moss still game-managed effectively against Penn State and threw for 336 yards and three scores against Maryland.

“He’s still executing at a very high level,” Riley said Monday. “He’s making a lot of plays, a lot of really good decisions. There’s always going to be a couple mistakes, and the ones that he has certainly can’t kill us.”

“Everybody goes through tough stretches,” Riley continued, a question later. “Everybody goes through times where things don’t fall your way, and the best ones continue to battle. And he’s one of the best ones, and he’s going to continue to battle.”

For all his time in a cardinal-and-gold jersey, Moss is still approaching just the ninth start of his career. The past stretch, he said Monday, had taught him plenty about who he is. And he stuck true to the man in the arena mantra once stitched on the back of his graduation robe, a young man who had mumbled into the microphone Saturday speaking with a philosopher’s song two days later.

“The power, the integrity, all that stuff, that comes to people who are able to navigate difficult things, to continue to go back out there, to continue to put their work on display in front of the world,” Moss said. “To continue to go back out there, to continue to put their work on display in front of the world, and not the people that are continuing to tear them down no matter what.”

And then came another jab, self-actualization turned to scorn, a veiled hint that he didn’t plan on going anywhere.

“So, obviously, people, you know, seek a lot of negativity around our team, and it is what it is,” Moss finished. “And I hope they keep that same energy going forward.”

ocregister.com

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