Whicker: USC’s Life of Riley might not come sooner
With all the celebration over Lincoln Riley’s hire, the Trojans won’t gain the physicality they need overnight
Mark Whicker (OC Register) — Like all coaches, Lincoln Riley will need some adjustments.
His family has dogs named Boomer and Sooner, named when it seemed Riley was an Oklahoma lifer. Reportedly the new names under consideration are Folt and Bohn.
And, on some L.A. mornings, it will sometimes take Riley 38 or more minutes to go eight miles. That was not a problem in his previous hometowns, none of which were more populous than Lubbock, Texas. (254,000).
Then there’s football. On Saturday, when he watches Donte Williams coach his final lame-duck game at Cal, Riley will learn that his Mecca Project might not be accomplished in a fingersnap.
The Trojans must win to go 5-7. If anything can motivate the underclassmen, it should be Riley’s glare from upstairs, especially since real players from elsewhere are gathering outside his door like a line for the next great cellphone.
Riley might feel like throwing about 30 of the remaining Trojans through the transfer portal without opening the door first. Bad penalties and lukewarm effort are not tolerated in his world.
By now, Riley realizes he will need a massive influx of big folks.
Daniel Jeremiah, former scout and current Chargers’ radio analyst, shares the “Moving The Sticks” podcast with Bucky Brooks, another ex-scout. Earlier this year, Jeremiah talked of meeting a colleague who was on the Coliseum sideline before a game.
“I looked at USC and I couldn’t tell who the defensive linemen were,” the scout said.
Oklahoma had five first-round picks when Riley was the head coach. All but linebacker Kenneth Murray (Chargers) were quarterbacks and receivers. However, Oklahoma had four offensive linemen drafted in 2019 between Rounds 2 and 4. Bobby Evans of the Rams was one of those.
Defense never was Oklahoma’s meal ticket, but the 2019 team ranked 29th nationally in points-against. Riley is bringing defensive coordinator Alex Grinch, who was Washington State’s defensive boss when Mike Leach was there and knows how to breed physical defense while practicing against the daily ballet.
It will help that Riley is stomping into a Pac-12 that has devolved into tapioca. Washington is changing coaches, Arizona State is being investigated, and Cal, Stanford, Colorado and Arizona are years behind.
Riley will not harvest the talent that greeted him at Oklahoma, when he came as offensive coordinator in 2015 and took over in 2017. If Ohio State’s Ryan Day “was born on third base and thought he hit a triple,” as Michigan’s Jim Harbaugh snarked Saturday, Riley was bearing down on an empty net in a shootout. Baker Mayfield and Kyler Murray were both transfer quarterbacks.
But they became Heisman winners with Riley, who recruited another potential one in Caleb Williams. His offenses have topped 500 yards in 55 games at Oklahoma. Three times, OU averaged more than eight yards per snap.
East Carolina averaged 533 yards in Riley’s final year as its coordinator. In consecutive years, they scored 55 and 70 on North Carolina.
The quarterback was Shane Carden, who coaches high school football in Idaho and is a Newport Beach native. He remembers the Pete Carroll days at the Coliseum and fully expects a sequel.
“There’s no point in which he thinks he’s out of a ballgame,” Carden said. “We thought we could score from every point on the field. He was always preparing for this. He took notes at every meeting, all the time I was there.
“But he didn’t just pound football into us. He kept it light, told us jokes, made sure we knew there were other things to life. I was struck by how short his play sheet was. If you didn’t feel comfortable with something, he didn’t have such an ego that he made you run it.”
“There are all kinds of Air Raids,” Carden said. “He really wants a tough, physical football team.”
OU fans were taken aback, of course. One player groused that Riley also used to tell the Sooners they were in the Mecca of football, and an Amish restaurant arranged its signboard to read, “Our Cheese Won’t Let You Down, Unlike Lincoln Riley.”
In truth, there is no clean break, and who are we kidding? Players change high schools, back off commitments and enter the portal at their whim. Coaches find out on Twitter..
In fact, there was one internet rumor that maintained USC was buying both of Riley’s houses in Norman. A local Realtor shot that down, but one surmises the deal was good enough for Riley to handle the L.A. delays.
After all, he gave up being a Sooner.
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