USC Football: Lincoln Riley Voices Tackling Discontent After Saturday's Win

Nevertheless, USC is 4-0 thus far.

Though your USC Trojans are now 4-0 thanks to a commanding 45-28 victory over the Arizona State University Aztecs this past Saturday, Derek Peterson of Saturday Out West writes that head coach Lincoln Riley is a bit frustrated with his club's defensive efforts.

“The tackling was the biggest disappointment,” Riley reflected. “We had a lot of negative plays. We were, on the night, pretty clean in the run game in terms of gap assignments. But we did not tackle them well. We knew the back coming in was a tough runner. He’s a good runner. He runs out of a lot of tackles.“I saw a lot of shoulders, a lot of guys kind of launching at guys trying for big hits and that fundamentally wasn’t where we needed to be.”

Per PFF's early per-play data, the Trojans missed 14 potential tackles (they did notch 10, however). Bryson Shaw and Max Williams were the biggest offenders with three apiece. ASU notched 353 yards of offensive games, averaging 5.7 yards per rushing try (when adjusting for the Trojans' eight sacks).

“That’ll be a big focus point,” Riley added. “Is it correctable? For sure. We’ve tackled well three out of the four (games) and we need to get back at it this week.”

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