UCLA vs. USC football preview: Trojans’ defense has a lot to prove
With defensive coordinator Alex Grinch gone, the unit's struggles going into Saturday's rivalry game at the Coliseum puts added pressure on the coaching staff
LOS ANGELES — Forty-eight hours into his tenure as USC’s interim co-defensive coordinator, Brian Odom couldn’t remember what day of the week it was.
Life has moved at breakneck speed inside the USC bunker since defensive coordinator Alex Grinch was fired and Odom, the inside linebackers coach, and defensive line coach Shaun Nua were promoted to co-defensive coordinators.
An offseason’s worth of potential tweaks to Grinch’s established defensive scheme could only be crammed into a handful of days, and head coach Lincoln Riley’s message to his staff was simple: Attack for two weeks. Figure the rest out later.
The reality of the situation, though, once this coaching staff comes up for some Thanksgiving turkey-scented air after this week’s crosstown matchup with UCLA, is obvious. Riley said Thursday, after two years building USC’s program and two years of defensive struggles, that he had a “lot more clarity” on the Trojans’ defensive-coordinator search, a new face who’d bring in an armada of fresh coaching disciples.
Perhaps it’ll be former Wisconsin DC Jim Leonhard. Perhaps Baylor head coach Dave Aranda if he’s fired, like Riley once a disciple of the late Mike Leach. Perhaps recently fired ex-Mississippi State head coach Zach Arnett, who took over the Bulldogs for Leach after his hospitalization.
Any way USC turns, there’ll be little immediate overlap with anyone on this current defensive staff. Odom and outside linebackers coach Roy Manning followed Grinch from Oklahoma; defensive backs coach Donte Williams has longevity and recruiting chops, but has largely failed to develop a standout homegrown corner in recent years.
That leaves one final showing Saturday for USC’s defensive staff, with jobs on the line, to galvanize a dysfunctional unit.
“You sign on the dotted line to go be a coach, there’s a lot of things that come with it – a lot of good, a lot of bad,” Odom said last week. “I wouldn’t change my profession, so the future will hold what it holds.”
Riley’s expressed goal for Saturday, against a UCLA offense that’s scored a total of 17 points across its past two games, is for this USC defense to take a step forward. Plain and simple, he put it. It’s logical, now with two weeks under the belt to implement tweaks removed from Grinch; players have pointed to Nua and Odom’s ability to simplify concepts.
“The one thing is that we got to keep getting them to play hard and play violent football,” Nua said. “That’s what’s going to overcome all this fancy fundamental stuff.”
There was little violence up front, though, in a 36-27 loss to Oregon last week, and fancy fundamental stuff seemed like it could’ve come in handy with a secondary that visibly threw up its hands multiple times after big-play Duck touchdowns.
So on Monday, Riley said, he and staff laid out clear expectations for players. The defensive group will be healthier. Guys at the front of the room, as he said, are different. Schematics are different.
“You’re certainly pushing that the combination of all that,” Riley said, “would lead to an improved performance this week.”
If it doesn’t, and UCLA’s offense sputters to life, it’ll leave a final ugly stain on USC’s ledger – and will likely lead to widespread staff shake-up.
When UCLA has the ball
Completely lost in discussions of the Bruins’ offensive struggles: Their run game is the best, in terms of yards per game, of any unit USC’s defense has faced this year. Transfer Carson Steele and TJ Harden form an effective one-two punch in the backfield. After a pretty decent showing against Oregon’s backs, the Trojans’ linebackers need to find angles to swallow up four-yard runs before they become eight.
“The key, I think, is really being consistent and sustaining drives,” UCLA head coach Chip Kelly said this week. “The teams that have had success offensively have sustained drives on them.”
When USC has the ball
Kelly is firmly on the #CalebForHeisman train.
Discussions of back-to-back Heisman hype for Williams have thoroughly died with USC’s season, but his stats – 3,249 passing yards, 40 total touchdowns, four interceptions – undeniably rival anyone’s.
“I think sometimes, you get into the ‘Well, he won it last year, so let’s give it to somebody else,’” Kelly said. “But if the award’s supposed to go to the best player in the country, that kid is as good as a football player as I’ve had the opportunity to coach against.”
That includes Andrew Luck, by the way. A hat tip, it seems, from Kelly before Williams’ potential final game of collegiate football. There’s no storyline more compelling from USC’s standpoint Saturday than a last chance to see a generational prospect at work against his program’s greatest rival.
UCLA (6-4 overall, 3-4 Pac-12) at USC (7-4, 5-3)
When: 12:30 p.m. Saturday
Where: Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum
TV/radio: ABC/570 AM