USC Football: Pundit Furious At Defensive Coordinator After ASU Game

Grinch needs to get his guys more prepared going forward.

It’s a little hard to explain what exactly happened with the USC Trojans over the weekend against Arizona State. They came into the game heavily favored, but early in the fourth quarter, the Sun Devils had a chance to take the lead.

The Trojans looked like a team that believed they would just walk all over their opponent, and then when the game was tight toward the end, they woke up. The defense was bad, and it seemed that they started to regress toward old habits from a season ago.

The preparation falls on head coach Lincoln Riley, but defensive coordinator Alex Grinch also deserves a ton of the blame. His guys didn’t really show up until the final few minutes of the game, and it made it much closer than it needed to be.

Matt Zemek of Trojans Wire gave Grinch a “D” on a report card for the game. They explain their thoughts on the overall performance.

“Grinch doesn’t get an “F” because the defense actually did win the game with its play early in the fourth quarter. The offense got stuck for several possessions. The defense came up with a huge turnover, and the pass rush collected several sacks to put the game away. That was good.”

Per Matt Zemek of Trojans Wire

It was a strange performance because the Trojans defense looked good for the first few weeks. They also came into this game off a bye week, so they had plenty of time to prepare for Arizona State.

"Having time off should refresh and sharpen players’ instincts. Instead, having time off seems to worsen those instincts. USC had a week off before this game. We should have seen a mentally fresh team come out and kick butt."

Per Matt Zemek of Trojans Wire

Overall, the Trojans need to play much better if they want to be taken seriously as title contenders. The defense will need to step up against better teams and do their part to help the explosive offensive attack out.

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