USC’s climb towards College Football Playoff collapses in dreadful loss to Utah

USC simply looked unprepared and undisciplined in containing two-way sensation Sione Vaki, who totaled 217 yards on the night

Luca Evans (OC Register)  —  LOS ANGELES — For weeks, after cracks have broken open USC’s facade through a variety of sloppy wins and sloppy losses, Lincoln Riley has preached of the climb – that ambiguous, non-linear journey towards glory that holds little accountability towards a clear-cut goal.

That goal, at least placed upon this program by fans and national expectations, has been a College Football Playoff, that true-powerhouse barometer USC has never hit in its existence.

A goal that seemed to stick true in Riley’s second season as head coach, through quarterback Caleb Williams’ expressed goals at immortality,  through comments like Riley’s thoughts on the run-game in late-September.

“Keep progressing ourselves towards that point to where we can be, hopefully, a championship team,” he said then.

But Saturday night, in a 34-32 loss to Utah, that particular climb ended in freefall – crashing down with one play that showed, quite simply, there’d been little change from where they’d begun.

Travel back to Aug. 26 for just a moment, USC’s first game of Riley’s second season against San Jose State, where Williams threw for four touchdowns and all was merry despite obvious issues with the Trojans’ defense. Back, simply, to one play that Saturday in the second quarter, when agile Spartans quarterback Chevan Cordeiro took off on a 3rd-and-22 and somehow picked up 28 yards for an ultimately inconsequential first down.

Travel forward to Saturday night, 16 seconds left and USC’s defense scrapping valiantly after an equally-valiant comeback, 16 precious seconds from preserving a 32-31 win. Ball at the 45. 2nd-and-15, after a penalty. Utes quarterback Bryson Barnes dropping back, facing pressure, and moving.

Skidding through USC’s defense, everybody in cardinal-and-gold calculating SAT-failing angles to try to run him down, Barnes freewheeling for 26 yards before finally being brought down.

Utah’s Cole Becker banged a 38-yarder. Ballgame.

College Football Playoff hopes, in a system that has never rewarded a two-loss team gone.

Trojans standing, shell-shocked, for a moment, adrenaline suddenly vacuumed out of the Coliseum.

“As gut-wrenching a defeat,” Riley said postgame, “as I can remember in my career.”

Gut-wrenching, because there was, truly, an overwhelming amount of good that had come from the muck of this Saturday night. Muck of a first half, of a reformed offensive line finally giving MarShawn Lloyd and the running game some room, only for the defense to get burned time and time again by safety-turned-Deebo-Samuel-esque-weapon Sione Vaki.

Through three quarters, USC was getting lit up by the quarterback son of a pig farmer and a guy who hadn’t really played offense in college until about two games ago. Down 28-17. Riley’s Air Raid shot down by the aerial-assault missiles in Utah’s secondary. Williams, coming off the worst game of his career against Notre Dame, without a touchdown.

And then Calen Bullock seemingly brought a defibrillator to a flatlining USC season.

In the fourth quarter, a ball from Barnes floated just long enough for Bullock to step in front, streaking 20 yards to the house with a pick. Momentum changed hands – even after a Utah field goal, even after USC could only match with a kick through the uprights after a third-down pass just improbably slipped out of Williams’ hands, the game broadcast showing the quarterback looking to the sky and holding his hands out as if to question a higher power on the return to the sideline.

“We had a couple of throws we’d love to have back,” Riley said postgame, when asked if he felt he went away from the run too much. “I don’t think any group was terrible, but everybody including me had a few mistakes, and you can’t make that against good teams.”

Thus, the burden of proof, yet again, was placed on this defense to get a stop. This maligned, criticized – heck, antagonized unit, coordinator Alex Grinch and company bearing the brunt of the fandom’s fury for an inconsistent start. They’d been shredded for much of the night by Vaki, the sudden two-way superstar taking a third-quarter pass for his second touchdown, making linebacker Tackett Curtis look like the recipient of an Allen Iverson crossover.

And they delivered triumphantly in waning minutes, forcing a stifling three-and-out, electrifying freshman Zachariah Branch (1) igniting the Coliseum with a long kick return and Williams darting in for a score to give USC the lead.

But the Trojans had gone for two-point conversions twice in the fourth quarter. Missed both. And with a one-point lead that could’ve been three, defensive lineman Bear Alexander committed a targeting penalty on a third-and-nine for Utah, setting in motion the drive that’d kill national-championship hopes.

Hopes Riley deflected back around, to the faces sitting in front of him, in postgame availability. When asked if it felt as if USC had fallen short of a goal – no national championship, no CFP appearance in play – he responded, “We’re in the middle of a season. That’s a dream world.”

“We don’t come in every single week talking about winning a national championship, going to the playoffs,” Riley continued. “I don’t know where that narrative starts.”

It started in the summer of 2022, when Riley professed to the Los Angeles Times’ Bill Plaschke his goal to “win the championship.” It continued with comments on championship aspirations. A narrative impossible to turn back, as Riley continues to profess the role of outside expectations on the team’s season, continuing to tighten a leash on media – with no players made available to speak after USC’s loss Saturday night.

So where does the climb lead, from here?

ocregister.com

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