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USC Morning Buzz: The Pundit Reacts To Their Golden Child’s Fall

On Sunday, I mentioned the pundits who have embarrassed themselves by constantly defending Lincoln Riley.

So how did they react? Well, perhaps the most predictable is loyal USC glazer Yogi Roth, who did a podcast with Todd Blackledge on Monday.

Roth chose to punt on the topic of Riley instead of examing his shortcomings:

“Living in L.A., being around ‘SC as much as I am, I do urge everybody to like take a beat.

“Like immediately a game ends, and it’s boom! We know what it is and I’m not even to reference it. . . . (but) things can flip in a week . . . it’s like people feel like they deserve answers immediately.

“I believe ‘SC is more than capable of winning the game Saturday night (against Ohio State).”

Imagine, people wanting immediate answers. The nerve. I mean, it’s Year 5 of Riley and we haven’t gotten any answers so how long does Roth want us to wait? Ten years?

He also didn’t want to reference any critical reactions. Why not? Because he doesn’t want to offend anyone in power at USC. Ever.

  • Meanwhile, the human windsock, Colin Cowherd, who has made campy, obnoxious videos lecturing everyone about good USC would be the past five years, turned on Monday.

“Soft doesn’t travel… It’s the same issues over, and over, and over again. It looks so much harder than it needs to be.”

“Their just not a tough, physical team . . . Maybe there’s flaws within the program. There’s an arrogance within the program. Whatever it is. It doesn’t work.”

15 thoughts on “USC Morning Buzz: The Pundit Reacts To Their Golden Child’s Fall”

    1. sorry he doesn’t have the “look” for image-centric SC. he looks like Fred Flintstone got fired from the rock quarry and put on some weight.

      #Yabba-Daaba-Doo

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  2. There is no discernible trend of improvement. They are much worse than in the game versus Michigan last year. It is easy to see that in every non-tomato can game this year, particularly last week. And it just isn’t the lack of being physical, it is the coaching staff not making real time game adjustments last week. Not since Alabama in 2016 have I seen the team so manhandled.

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  3. “A game ends, and it’s boom…, which means there are immediate knee jerk reactions, especially when SC loses

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  7. Hilarious that anyone would claim it’s due to one game. As I stated the other day, the marginal wins against cupcakes showed quite clearly to anyone who knows anything about football that this was coming.

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    1. Absolutely – like watching the early Reeves-coached Elway teams running gimmicky shuffle passes and draws out of the shotgun (before it became rigueur de jour) and knowing it would get them through the then woeful AFC playoffs, it would get blown apart in the Super Bowl … but then watching Mike Shanahan add Terrell Davis and a bunch of players with attitude and winning back-to-back … focused, disciplined aggressive play (ie attitude up to and ever so slightly crossing the line from time to time) never goes out of style …

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  8. Here’s some stats for you

    • Tackling Efficiency: Fifth-worst overall in the country (out of 138 FBS teams).
    • Defensive Efficiency: Ranked 116th by ESPN and 97th by PFF.
    • Defensive Passing Efficiency: Slotted at 113th, trailing almost every team in the Big Ten.

    “Thud” Tempo vs. Live Tackling

    When USC players talk about doing “tackling work every day,” they are referring to individual tech drills on dummies or “Thud” periods. In a “Thud” practice, defenders run at full speed, strike the ball-carrier with their upper body, but explicitly do not take them to the ground or drive through their legs. Other teams force players to the turf during specific scrimmage blocks to build muscle memory. USC relies on “mental leverage,” which frequently backfires on Saturdays when a running back doesn’t just stop moving when he gets hit.

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    1. Think of that in comparison to the stories about how physical the practices were under McKay and Goux (and later assistants like Jackson and Houck) … and not just for the big uglies (I’m thinking of multiple accounts of the running back gauntlet that was used to prep the TBs for the workload) …

      But Miley Coyote is an air raid 7-on-7 drill buffoon like Harrellsbury … one thing to do it because you have to in an attempt to overcome talent/recruiting deficits (like Leach did at Texas Tech) and you have some type of original understanding of how to make it work … totally another to just be replicating the diagrams on paper that someone handed you along the way.

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