COLUMN: Demoralizing loss to UCLA has to be rock bottom for USC ... right?
Veteran center Brett Neilon is often the most candid and insightful interview on this USC football team, whether it's after a win or a rock-bottom loss like the one the Trojans took Saturday night to rival UCLA.
And while he said this time that he didn't have the answers for why this team has fallen so off course as this runaway season careens toward its humbling conclusion, he actually kind of did.
"I have no clue. If I was hired as the next head coach maybe I'd have the answer, but I have no clue," Neilon said before offering more than one clue. "Maybe it's just the culture that's been established here. I don't know, I can't tell you, but yeah, it just seems like the same old story this year. This team's been through a lot, lots of ups and downs and a lot of stuff behind the scenes."
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Sometime soon a new coach will be hired and indeed his most important task will be changing the culture of this program.
Culture is hard to define, but this one sure seems broken.
And, yes, this also seems like a team with "a lot of stuff behind the scenes."
The hope Saturday was that hosting crosstown rival UCLA, a middling Pac-12 team that has sustained no consistency of its own this fall, would be a rallying point for the Trojans to finish the season on at least some uptick.
Instead, USC suffered its worst loss yet, 62-33, and gave up 609 yards of offense to the Bruins.
If this isn't indeed rock bottom, it's hard to fathom what could be.
The Trojans (4-6, 3-5 Pac-12) have played six games in the Coliseum this season and have lost four of those by at least 14 points (while trailing by at least 24 points at times in all four). The 29-point defeat Saturday was not only the worst of that bunch but the worst for USC in this rivalry series since 1954. The 62 points allowed tied the all-time program worst against any opponent -- sharing such ignominy with losses to Oregon in 2012 and Arizona State in 2013.
The Trojans' defense has fallen to such shambles that the compelling storyline of freshman quarterback Jaxson Dart's first career start became moot at a certain point Saturday -- no, he didn't play a perfect game, but even if he had it might not have mattered. (Dart was 27 of 47 for 325 yards, 1 TD and 2 INTs.)
Among the touchdowns UCLA (7-4, 5-3) scored Saturday were a 45-yard pass from Dorian Thompson-Robinson to Kazmeir Allen, a 58-yard pass to Allen, a 100-yard kickoff return by Allen, and just to punctuate the afternoon, a 42-yard touchdown run by Ethan Fernea, a little-used redshirt senior who had just 19 rushing yards all season entering the day.
The Bruins didn't just win -- they embarrassed the Trojans.
"It's frustrating. Of course we want to win and have a different outcome. It's especially frustrating because I feel like we can do it and we have the pieces and the talent to do it, but we just don't," Neilon continued. "So it kind of just feels like banging your head on the wall and not getting a different result. ... Time's running out and it just hasn't happened."
USC has two games left and needs to win both to become bowl eligible or at least one to avoid the program's worst record since a 3-8 finish in 1991.
But at this point, there is no reason to expect much to markedly improve before time mercifully expires on this season.
The offense still shows potential -- Gary Bryant Jr. flashed No. 1 WR upside with 9 catches for 161 yards and a TD, both Dart and Kedon Slovis (if healthy) are plenty capable of big games, and RB Keaontay Ingram has been excellent — but even if the wide receivers somehow get past their collective penchant for drops, there's no overcoming this defense.
Asked earlier this week how the unit utilized the extra practices last week with no game to play, defensive coordinator Todd Orlando said, "It's just the tackling. Just keep addressing it, the fundamentals that go along with it."
It's Week 12 of the season ...
Not to say Orlando is wrong in identifying that this team lacks sound tackling fundamentals -- he's surely as frustrated as anybody -- but even he has to know it's not going to change at this point. (It most definitely didn't Saturday).
This team is what it is. USC football is what it is -- at its lowest point since at least a string of five 6-or-fewer win seasons in the span of six years from 1996-2001 before Pete Carroll revived the program.
But maybe that's not even a fair comparison to represent the depths the Trojans have found now. USC had seven losses of at least 14 points combined over that six-year span -- it has SIX such losses already this season, including the road defeats at Notre Dame and Arizona State. Yes, every single loss has ended up by a margin of at least two touchdowns.
Read into that what you will.
USC has another pivotal coaching hire to make now, but dreaming of an almost-immediate Carroll-like resurgence is ignoring the reality of where things stand, even if athletic director Mike Bohn nails this hire.
The Trojans need to rebuild their defense from the bottom up.
Sure, there are several promising players already in place -- and other highly-rated freshmen that haven't truly gotten their shot yet, like Raesjon Davis, the sparingly-used Korey Foreman when healthy, etc. -- but the perilously thin defensive line and perennially underachieving linebacking corps are going to take multiple recruiting classes to truly restore.
The Trojans gave up 260 rushing yards to UCLA, which averaged 5.9 yards on 44 carries. That is awfully similar to giving up 258 rushing yards and 6.8 yards per carry on 38 attempts to Arizona State the last game.
"It's almost like guys started getting beat down," interim head coach Donte Williams said Saturday. "All of a sudden we was hitting the running back and he still was going forward for 4 or 5 more yards and that's a problem."
It seems like maybe the whole unit has gotten beaten down from the mounting struggles this season -- and that has become an insurmountable problem
The defense has now given up an average of 40 points per game over the last five contests. Yes, that's skewed by the 62 from UCLA, but the only opponents the Trojans have held under 31 points all season were San Jose State, a Washington State team playing with a walk-on backup QB and a hapless Colorado squad.
Which bears stating that it's not just the defensive front, of course. The secondary has some significantly underachieving veterans who still command a substantial share if not majority of the snaps. Maybe the young players will bring new life to that unit in time -- redshirt freshman Xavion Alford made a great play on the ball Saturday for his third interception in the last two games -- but in the meantime, opponents are feasting with big shots downfield.
Asked what went so wrong with the defense Saturday, Williams said, "You name it."
Asked how he would diagnose what has gone so wrong with the defense all season, junior cornerback Chris Steele -- who also had an interception Saturday and has been one of the steadier defensive backs overall the second half of this season -- gave a truthful assessment.
"Teams are making their plays and we aren't. I feel like from a schematic standpoint people just aren't doing their job for the most part, just broken plays, missed assignments that have been going on," he said.
That's the how -- but pinning down the why is tougher.
Why is this team struggling so much?
More to the point, why has it been such a challenge fixing those struggles and turning this season around (even a little)?
"At this point to me, the teams that are good teams are fairly healthy. The teams that all of a sudden the season hasn't gone the way they want it to go, they're not the most healthiest teams. The great teams in the season have guys that have been injured and have been able to all of a sudden the backups have stepped up. I think at certain key spots we need guys to continue to develop and get better," Williams said when asked that question. "Some freshmen that maybe thought they were going to redshirt this season that now are not redshirting, they're almost in the game starting. So we have to continue to proceed and stay the course."
Injuries certainly haven't helped -- losing star wide receiver Drake London was a cannonball to the stern for this USC offense and junior pass rusher Drake Jackson has been banged up much of the season and played very limited snaps in this one --- but that is not why the Trojans are 4-6 and giving up 600-plus yards to a rival inside the Coliseum.
No, there are no easy answers -- or apparently easy solutions.
"Man, I mean, it could be 100 different reasons. I don't know exactly. I'm a player at the end of the day," said Ingram, who is probably wondering the same thing after once again doing his part Saturday with 96 yards rushing and 39 receiving. "I will say there's a lot of fixing up to do, even just as players, coaches, just everything. It's a domino effect. It's just so many to pinpoint -- I don't know, I can't tell you exactly."
He's not wrong -- it is hard to pin it down to one thing.
Or maybe Neilon did it when he talked about culture.
Only those inside the program know the extent of what that means, but everyone knows USC football has been in a slide for several years now under former coach Clay Helton. The foundation has been crumbling, whether it's questions about toughness (mental and physical), discipline (USC entered the day ranked 126 out of 130 FBS teams in averaging 78.2 penalty yards per game), accountability (the area Williams has tried to focus on improving), recruiting at certain key positions (offensive line, defensive line, linebacker and receiver), etc.
It will be on the next head coach to fix all of that, to set a fresh tone and renewed standards, to rebuild the brand on the recruiting trail, to re-establish a true expectation for success ... and teach the defense the fundamentals of tackling.
Like Neilon said, maybe whoever is hired as the new coach will have the answers to all those issues.
A new era of USC football is coming soon and that provides the fresh optimism this forsaken season can not.
Until then, well, at least it can only go up from here … right?