FOOTBALL

Lincoln Riley Defends Defense

USC coach Lincoln Riley made a plea for the defense after today’s practice.

“There’s a lot of good things happening on this defense.

“A lot of people in the media had their mind up. That the first second there was any adversity this year, oh my God, should have done this and they should have made this change and it’s not true.

“You’re going through the whole year. You’re going to have a tough game. You’re going to have a tough quarter. Do you respond? Do you show continued growth? That’s going to continue to be written throughout the entire year. There’s a lot of great things happening here. We’ll own the things that need to get better.

“But people need to make sure they’re seeing the other side as well.”

51 thoughts on “Lincoln Riley Defends Defense”

  1. Uh, the defense is getting worse not better, your defense has bad GAMES not quarters, your pass defense is non existent.

    Coach 162 can blather all he wants to about how his defense is doing just fine, but it doesn’t pass the eye test.

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    1. Turn your ‘subjectivity’ into a semblance of ‘objectivity, or what did your “eye test” say when SC went from 0-17 to 28-20 with Arizona-

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      2. Agreed. OU-SC. Maybe not worse than Smith 2.0 (of course nothing could be worse than Helton 2.0), but certainly Stoops 2.0. No way he doesn’t know how bad it is (just a second generation pedant who won’t publicly admit). Hard to believe Stoops won his only national championship by winning a game 13-2. All downhill after that. LR has just brought OU to SC. One suspects he doesn’t know what to do or how to change (which would bring us to Helton 2.0). What would this program be without Williams over the past two seasons? Just like how much more obvious Helton’s incompetence would have been without Darnold.

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  3. What would be the most scary is if he really can’t see his defense is one of the worst in the nation, and Grinch’s keystone cops schemes are being talked about nationally. I just think he knows matchup offense that put his strong players against their weak, but line play and defensive fits / containment is just not interesting enough. Hell, he even minimizes the importance of special teams.

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    1. So true, he really must believe he’s the smartest person in the room, and doesnt believe there are areas of improvement- because you know- he’s smarter than everyone else and their perceptions about his defense are wrong. He’s f’ing clueless

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    1. LR can spin this thing any way he wants to. Facts don’t lie. The fact is they are 111th in defense and they haven’t even began the tough part of their schedule. They were 106th last year for the whole year. They are worse this year than last year and they have much better players than last year.. This team is probably going to lose 3 or 4 games. They should have gotten rid of Grench.

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    1. I’m picking ND. SC has really good talent. If they were to all put it together for one game, they could probably beat anyone but so far that hasn’t happened. They’re very inconsistant. If you are a bettor, the best bet is ND.

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      1. ND was horrendous against Louisville- only 298 total yards of offense. They can’t keep up with SC’s Celeb Williams offense.

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      2. Disagree. The old betting axiom is if you feel an underdog can win outright then bet them and take the gifted points

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      3. You’re revealing my ignorance of sports betting. I don’t bet and don’t know that much the betting game. I’m not talking about the possibility of taking the points. I’m just picking a winner. But I guess that’s not the way it works.

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  7. To support Wiley’s claim that the 2023 Trojan defense is superior to 2022s
    would be how his team was trailing Arizona 17-0, and his defense only
    surrendered 11 more points in regulation to allow the offense to catch up at 28-all

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  9. I just read the entire article and the writer talks about the SC naysayer “fans” as a
    “pitch-forked mob,” shades of the anti-Helton years, with Wiley assuring that
    SC is ready to take on the second half of this season

    Words aside, time to ‘show me’

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  10. He will be eating his words at some point…being in denial of the obvious is not a good trait…wish I was wrong. This year the ‘D’ line is better,but the rest is still bad or worse.

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  11. Sorry to see the SC regulars in such pain over 6-0
    but better days are ahead, the regular season is over in 6-weeks

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  12. this is getting to a point where it is laughable- Riley, your team is 10th in a defensively weak Pac 12, 109th nationally in defense, giving up 171 yards after catch against the 3 teams that had heartbeats, and you are going to sell to the public- your defense is better? Yes, we can get tackles for losses, and get sacks- but when your team still cant tackle- when allegedly is was a point of emphasis- and are giving up this many points per game- does that equal a better defense? He must be using that “new” math. He must be smoking dope.

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    1. 109th in defense? No amount of spin is going to cover that up. You should have gotten rid of Grench. I’ll go one step further. I’ll say that if you had never brought him over here and had gone out and gotten a really great DC before the 2022 season, we might have won the NC last year and this year too.

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  14. A sure sign of incompetence is defending the indefensible. CLR, it hasn’t been one bad series, bad quarter, or bad game. The defense has been bad since the Pac-12 Title game last season, so quit trying to gas light your fan base. We know what we see and you are in the midst of pissing away the talents of a once in a generation QB with three maybe four losses this season.

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      1. “Us”? You are a UCLA Fan, Charlie Bucket. Tell us all about the big Bruin game against the Beavs.

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    2. 3 or 4 losses out of the remaining 6 games? Let’s break this down–
      ND– basically a toss-up
      Utah at home– Trojans favored
      at Cal– Trojans favored
      at Oregon– good chance for a loss
      Wash- home cooking will help SC
      sucla– ditto

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  16. Warning- quasi-political ahead-

    I guess my Spring vacation to Israel is off
    although I had planned on avoiding the hostilities
    “Eye for an eye” still does not work

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    1. No one to blame but yourself- you supported the senile old coot who caused this mess.

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      1. Today this is what Senile Joe is worried about:

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  17. From a coaching perspective there is one bright spot and that is the pass rush is better, at times. But otherwise, the linebackers are as bad as last year and the secondary has fallen down. Mekhi Blackmon was the one bright spot last year in the secondary (other than Bullock).

    But what do you expect him to say? This defense is trash. Really? He has to inject this defense with positive energy. Maybe in private they are making changes. Like getting Shaw off the field???

    I was actually more worried that last week we saw an offense that never truly looked good. That was the trump card for USC and it might not be real. I think that CW might be getting too full of himself, too frustrated by the defense and might not be executing on the things he really needs to be doing.

    I have said since last year that Riley needed to coach the team to not rely on CW and he has not done it. Without CW’s amazing scrambling, this team is toast in every way.

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      1. Interesting, because when I sent Michael Guarino a package of papers to his Maui address he thanked me for receiving them

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      2. Can you answer this question? The day/night of the Maui fire cell phone and internet service was out in his part of the island for over 36 hours. Yet he was posting comments that night and the next morning. How did he pull it off?

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      3. You are Charlie Bucket the disgruntled UCLA Fan. Tell us about your Bruins.

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      4. John, just because the Village Idiot posts it doesn’t mean it’s true. You can pretty much count on it being bs.

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      5. slo pa-troll, you know what stalking and obsessed looks like- 74 consecutive posts mentioning or directed at Gabby.

        Obsess: preoccupy or fill the mind of (someone) continually, intrusively, and to a troubling extent.

        Stalk: 1. pursue or approach stealthily. 2. harass or persecute (someone) with unwanted and obsessive attention.

        Take your own advice, you sound like a hypocrite; “but several people have suggested So Cal seek psychiatric help!! He is in some serious denial.”

        THERE YOU HAVE IT FOLKS, THE BLOG FREAK!

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    2. Charlie Bucket is a UCLA Fan who showed up on Scott’s old Daily News blog over a decade ago when Pete Carroll was head coach at USC. He never got over the 1967 21-20 loss and has dedicated his life to destroying this blog and harassing the USC students, faculty and alumni who post here.

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  19. I have always believed that 1967 21-20 game loss really took the starch out of a lot of suclas, talk about a fork in the road as SC went on to rule the 1970s

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  20. MG, was a imposter made up by Scott and all the others so that’s why people left. They are avatars symbols n whatever maybe they will come back when all these alter egos of Scott go away n people will use there username which is a real person you think? Not feeling this blog .

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