Trial by Air Raid: Clay Helton guilty by association as Washington intercepts USC's upset bid

USC was battling the elements before it traveled to Washington. The circumstances of its 28-14 loss are overshadowed by calls for this to be the end of the road for Coach Clay Helton.

Jennifer Buchanan-USA TODAY Sports

SEATTLE -- There are reasons and there are excuses. At this point, about four years to the week that Clay Helton became the head coach at USC, everything falls into the latter category when things don’t go well.

There’s another world in which the Trojans have their best quarterback, safety and cornerback available, like they did against Stanford and Utah, and this game at Washington is very different.

Excuses, excuses, excuses, I know.

But hear me out for a moment. The Huskies probably don’t break off a game-sealing 89-yard TD run with Talanoa Hufanga on the field. Leading receiver Aaron Fuller is likely more contained and doesn’t help set up two Washington scores if Olaijah Griffin is playing.

Even without Hufanga and Griffin, this proved to be a winnable game for USC, a point that will be dismissed by many given the vitriol for the head coach. Losing 28-14 at hostile Husky Stadium to a good Washington team still provides too good an opportunity to hate on Helton to be objective.

Never mind that USC (3-2, 2-1 Pac-12) was playing with the fourth-best quarterback on its campus. If Helton made any mistake that cost him Saturday, it was running Jack Sears off the team before the season.

“The defense put us in position to a have a chance to win today,” Helton said afterward. “We had an opportunity to really come away with a win today, and we let that go today by stuff that we did.”

If you watched the game, you know what they did. There was also something crucial they didn’t do, because they couldn’t do it. With Kedon Slovis in street clothes on the sideline, on the mend after suffering a concussion last week, USC couldn’t beat Washington throwing the ball. 

That’s, uh, sort of indispensable to the Air Raid.

Aside from a couple passes out of bounds, I counted just seven instances (among 32 attempts) in which Matt Fink threw the ball 10 yards past the line of scrimmage. Not talking deep balls here. Routine, intermediate stuff.

Two were completed -- the long TD over the top to Michael Pittman, and a 19-yarder to Tyler Vaughns on USC’s final possession. That’s the entire extent of Fink’s successful first-down throws.

As for the other five? One was deflected, one was a dropped INT, and the other three were picked off.

“You can’t turn the ball over three times,” offensive coordinator Graham Harrell lamented. “You just can’t do it.”

Not being able to pass the ball with any semblance of consistency or effectiveness is just as damaging. It’s the root of the turnovers. Washington played Cover 3 and often dropped eight, effectually taking away the middle of the field for most of the game. But not entirely.

Where the Huskies differed from BYU is they pressed on the perimeter and had a safety over the top. Not ideal for throwing deep, as Pittman would point out. But they were in man coverage on third downs, electing to bring pressure instead. The intermediate throws that move the sticks, that are essential to this offense, presented themselves but weren’t seen, or attempted, or both.

“It was there a few times but they played a lot of different mixes of defense,” wide receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown said. “Credit to them, they played a good game. They had a lot of different coverages out there.”

It should be noted, this is what USC prepared for, even if it didn’t look like it.

“They played exactly what we thought we’d see,” Harrell added. “At times we had opportunities and didn’t take them.”

The Trojans did take advantage of the running lanes and ended up outpacing their passing attack, 212-163. They had as many true rushing attempts as passes thrown (32). All three backs were productive, as Markese Stepp finally played a feature role and gained 62 yards on 10 carries, Vavae Malepeai had 49 on 10 and Stephen Carr had 94 on seven -- with one going for 60 yards.

It was the best Carr’s looked in two years, and his big run in the third quarter put USC in position to make it a one-score game. Three plays later, USC was at the Washington 10-yard-line when Fink threw into double coverage and was intercepted at the goal line.

“It was just a bad read,” Fink admitted. “I should have handed the ball off. It was on me.”

The Huskies went ahead 28-7 two plays later on Salvon Ahmed’s long touchdown run. Harrell was asked about his QB’s self-assessment and couldn’t help but echo it. 

“I probably would have handed it off," Harrell said. "… To me that flipped the momentum and changed the whole game. When you play a good football team, when you make mistakes in critical situations like that, the odds are you’re going to get beat.”

The Trojans reached the red zone once more in the fourth quarter, running on six consecutive plays to set up fourth-and-goal from the 2. Fink then threw an uncatchable pass to freshman Drake London.

USC had one more possession, with the game essentially out of reach, and Fink again targeted London, again missed badly, and again was intercepted at the goal line.

“At the quarterback position, you got to go through your reads,” Harrell said. “In this offense, you got to be disciplined enough, no matter what happened the previous play, to continue to go through your reads and hit the open guy and if you do that you’re going to move the ball.”

A silver lining, if you’re up for one, is that the Trojans moved the ball on the ground, albeit against a defense that invited them to. They’re likely to see more teams approach them similarly, so the fact that they committed to running, and did it well, is something they can build on.

“It was one of those days where you needed to be balanced,” Helton said. “I thought the running game was there. We challenged our kids coming in, we need to be physical and dominant. It needs to be one of those 200-yard games to help get some advantageous coverage for Matt and the wideouts, and it was.”

It just didn’t translate to success through the air. The Trojans had 26 passing yards after the first quarter and 62 at the half. The final tally of 163 is the program’s lowest mark with one QB playing all four quarters in four years.

"What came down to it was my decision-making," Fink said. "It wasn’t the best. The ball was turned over way too much and they capitalized on just about each and every one of them."

The last time USC threw for so few yards, Cody Kessler was the quarterback and Helton was the offensive coordinator. It was also against Washington, and it was Steve Sarkisian’s final game as USC’s head coach.

The expectation internally is that Slovis, Hufanga and Griffin will be back for the next game, two weeks from Saturday against Notre Dame. The trio would give USC more than a puncher’s chance of scoring the upset. I assume we’ll know by Monday if Helton will be there, too.

He's now 12-16 away from the Coliseum and 1-12 as a road underdog.

Just let the record show he didn’t spoil his team’s chances in Seattle. If only the real reasons for which USC loses these days were deemed relevant.