USC Football: Ex-Trojans All-American Reveals Surprising Team Concern
In your USC Trojans' catastrophic road loss to the Notre Dame Fighting Irish this past Saturday night, there were a lot of things that you could point to that caused the poor on-field product.
Off the field but on the sidelines, however, a former USC All-American that attended the game had another criticism:
This anonymous former player's complaint is something to think about when it comes to team morale and attitude going forward. While, broadly, the team should bounce back from this loss, if their response to being embarrassed on national television is "waving towels and jumping up and down," we may have a cause for concern.
It's highly possible (but entirely opinionated and speculation), that this Trojans squad has gained too much confidence from their early season wins against poor competition.
Even last season, outside of a win against UCLA and Notre Dame, the remainder of the Trojans wins were against unranked teams, and then they lost to No. 11 Utah by 24 in the Pac-12 Championship, and No. 16 Tulane in the Cotton Bowl, making their overall record vs. ranked teams 2-2, which is not impressive, relatively speaking.
This, paired with head coach Lincoln Riley's strangely hefty amount of optimism, creates a dangerous combination of the Trojans potentially being in a situation such that they don't feel like they need to improve as much as they do.
As I mentioned in that article, Riley discussed how he "liked" what was being done on the defensive side of the ball, which, frankly, makes no sense, given how poor the USC defense has been the past two seasons.
If Riley's unwilling to acknowledge the elephant in the room that hinders their success, which would be the team's poor defense, that doesn't bode well for changes that have to be made on the offensive side of the ball, intangibly, and more.
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