COLUMN: Fans' preferences aside, the D'Anton Lynn hire a smart one for USC
The fans wanted former Wisconsin defensive coordinator Jim Leonhard, or if Baylor fired head coach Dave Aranda, he would do just fine as well.
Social media buzz swirled for two weeks, since USC's regular season ended, with "reports" or conjecture -- often one and the same -- bouncing from Leonhard to Utah DC Morgan Scalley, Texas A&M DC D.J. Durkin, former Florida DC Geoff Collins and Nebraska DC Tony White.
Never in all of that was UCLA's DC D'Anton Lynn ever the consensus hot name until he was THE name, with USC announcing Lynn's hiring as defensive coordinator Friday night after the news leaked earlier in the evening from reports by national college football reporters Pete Thamel and Bruce Feldman.
Sure, Lynn was on all the candidate lists compiled across the internet -- including all four versions of ours here at TrojanSports.com -- but he was never the central storyline in the Trojans' search, at least from the outside perspective.
We'll never truly know where Lynn ranked on Lincoln Riley's initial list, but it's at least possible the right choice for the Trojans was indeed right in their backyard this whole time.
There has been mixed reaction from fans to the hiring these last 24 hours, and we're not here to tell anyone they're right or wrong or to drive a narrative. Frankly, the fact that Lynn has only been a coordinator -- or even a college coach, for that matter -- for one season makes it hard to project what he'll be under the spotlight now at USC. Small sample sizes come with wide margins of error. On top of it, it's especially hard to know what kind of recruiter Lynn will be as the Bruins only have four defensive commits in this 2024 recruiting class (with only one four-star in that group). UCLA recruiting under Chip Kelly is admittedly a little different than recruiting at USC under Riley, and it's also as much as about the position coaches as anything, so we'll just leave that aside as an unknown.
For those that have their doubts, that's fair.
But there's also every bit of potential that this could well prove to be an inspired hire and better than any of those other names bandied about over this last month since former DC Alex Grinch was fired.
Hear us out, hear us out!
First, we're talking about potential outcomes -- not proclaiming we know what will come from Lynn's time with the Trojans. Nobody does. We're not handing him the Broyles Award just yet or telling you Riley proved his doubters wrong with this hire.
But for those either already optimistic by the move or simply open-minded, let's start by noting that it's pretty irrefutable what Lynn did in his one season with the Bruins. He took over a UCLA defense that ranked 89th nationally last season in yards (405.2 YPG) and points allowed (29.0 PPG) and turned that into a unit that just finished the regular season ranked 11th -- tops in the Pac-12 -- in giving up just 299.0 YPG and 16th in scoring defense (18.08 PPG).
That kind of dramatic turnaround doesn't just happen. There are well-compensated, well-regarded defensive coordinators around college football who have never had a fringe-top-10 national defense, and Lynn just about did it in his first try.
But let's dive even deeper into those numbers ...
Lynn's defense excelled at everything the Trojans did so incredibly poorly this year (and for a number of years).
USC got run over, through and around all season by opposing running backs (and quarterbacks). Meanwhile, across town, UCLA had the top-ranked rushing defense in the entire FBS, giving up a paltry 69.6 yards per game on the ground. (USC fans might recall the Trojans' running backs totaling just 23 yards on 14 carries and the team finishing with 3 net rushing yards vs. the Bruins two weeks ago).
Grinch's Trojans mastered in giving up explosive plays. Few teams were better at clearing entirely out of the picture for a running back to rumble for gobs of yards or more helpful to opposing quarterbacks looking to scramble for third-and-long conversions. USC gave up 23 rushing plays of 20 yards or more (only 10 teams in the country were more generous in that regard), 10 of 30 yards or more, 8 of at least 40 yards (only three defenses allowed more) and 6 rushing plays of at least 50 yards (only Louisiana Tech was worse).
In the sharpest of contrasts possible, Lynn's Bruins were the only defense in the FBS -- the singular, only one -- to not give up even one rushing play of at least 20 yards. They gave up 33 total plays of 20 yards or more (all passes, obviously), which ranks tied for 7th nationally while USC was 120th with a total of 68 such explosive plays allowed.
Moving along ...
While USC's secondary showed no progress and its highly-rated DB talent lacked for tangible development, that's where the Bruins improved the most (with most of the same players) under Lynn, a former defensive back at Penn State and DBs coach in the NFL with the Houston Texans and Baltimore Ravens the last three years (as well as the son of former Chargers head coach Anthony Lynn). UCLA went from 118th nationally in pass defense last season (273 YPG) to 71st (229.4).
(While the Bruins' defensive line was arguably the strength of the defense, a lot of credit there probably needs to go to DL coach Ikaika Malloe, who had already made Laiatu Latu into a star pass rusher the year before, but the group was even better this year, for what it's worth).
As for Lynn's two seasons coaching the safeties with the Ravens, his last year there was spent working under defensive coordinator Mike MacDonald, a rising star himself who was fresh off producing a top-20 defense as the DC at Michigan before leading the top-ranked defense in the NFL last season (234 YPG) and the No. 2-ranked unit so far this season.
Perhaps there is a linear connection to be made to all of that ...
To that point, who's to say if Lynn had stayed another year or two at UCLA, he wouldn't have replicated the results and been one of the most coveted young coaches in the country? USC and Riley pounced early, betting that is the case, which is sometimes what has to be done to find elite coordinators. The established names most often either aren't looking to make lateral moves (Scalley, Georgia's Glenn Schumann -- another fan favorite in this search) or are waiting for head coaching offers (Leonhard and White).
Even if USC had landed Leonhard or White, maybe they would have been gone a year later for a head coaching job, leaving the Trojans in a state of transition yet again.
Maybe, for all the reasons spelled out, this was truly the best outcome in filling this position.
Maybe, or maybe not. Time will tell -- it always does.
After the Grinch experience and the criticism Riley endured for doubling-down on his former DC for so long, he and the Trojans needed to nail this hire.
Whether they did or didn't won't be known for quite some time. They also needed to deliver a jolt to defensive recruiting, and if there's one concern we have about Lynn, it's not knowing if he can do that -- at least, on his own (and hopefully he wouldn't have to)..
But as much as anything, Riley and the Trojans needed to first revive optimism for 2024 and the daunting schedule that awaits. They needed to create fresh hope that the defense could change its trajectory not only in the big picture but in time to be competitive in USC's Big Ten debut.
One could say, they needed this defensive coordinator hire and the subsequent turnaround on that side of the field to turn out as immediately successful as ... well, UCLA's DC hire last offseason.
Is it not a stretch to believe that Lynn might be ideally suited to do that?
(See what we did there?)
This column space has admittedly been about as wrong about past defensive coordinator hires as the USC program has been in recent years. Heck, we thought Todd Orlando made a lot of sense in 2020, all things considered. Whoops. We were statedly neutral on Grinch through the first year, but many others forecasted his failure early on.
So, again, we're not here to tell you that Riley irrefutably nailed this hire -- though we definitely like it quite a bit -- or to tell anyone what their own opinion of it should be.
We're just saying that if one is looking for tangible reasons for optimism that Lynn could be that guy, or fresh hope that the Trojans could make quick progress on that side of the ball and exceed expectations next fall, those reasons are abundantly present and compelling.
And given the current state of the USC defense, well, that's saying a lot.