COLUMN: USC's deflating loss to OSU just a reminder of why change was made
USC interim head coach Donte Williams was peppered in the postgame press conference Saturday night with all the expected questions after such a deflating performance and loss to Oregon State.
And then he was asked if his promotion to interim head coach was maybe too much, too soon for him to handle.
"No, this is what I've been doing my whole life," Williams responded. "So no moment would ever be too big. This is what I've been doing, this is what I'll continue to do."
If anything, many of us -- I'm raising my hand -- maybe bought in too much, too soon after Williams' reinvigorating debut as head coach last week at Washington State.
Maybe he does not indeed have the magical powers to immediately undo the problems that festered for years upon years under former coach Clay Helton, but who would?
If this Trojans team is going to play hard for anyone at this point, it would be Williams, who is likely the most respected coach on staff and who has at least tried to change up the teams' procedures, tried to enforce accountability and set a new tone. A lot of the points we made in this column last week remain valid and he definitely made an impact heading into that previous game.
But the reality is it's the middle of a season in a stretch of seasons in which USC has been marred by consistent issues (which is about the only consistent thing about this program).
The win over Washington State provided an opening for optimism that was worth buying into to see where it went. Maybe, just maybe this could still be the season the Trojans hoped it could be.
After a 45-27 loss at home to Oregon State, maybe not -- but that's not an indictment on Williams. The verdict of culpability was already handed down two Mondays ago in dismissing Helton just two games into the season, and all of this gets retroactively applied as well.
"This is not going to turn around overnight," quarterback Kedon Slovis acknowledged afterward. "We're trying to build something here. Coach Donte's done a great job of starting to hold guys accountable and changing the culture and building the culture. You're not going to see it change in one week. We have a lot of work to do."
If anyone had reason to be frustrated with Williams it would be Slovis, a third-year starter and 2020 first-team All-Pac-12 QB whom his coach said last Sunday (and Monday and Tuesday and so on) should have to compete for his job now after being served up to a punishing sack by his two young offensive tackles last week, which opened the door for freshman Jaxson Dart's incredible debut. If there's a situation that Williams could be criticized for, it's the handling of the Dart injury news and casting public doubt on his junior starting quarterback even after it became clear the impressive freshman QB was not going to be an option right now following minor knee surgery Tuesday, all in the name of gamesmanship that clearly made no difference.
But in the big picture, that's a minor critique and a first-time head coach doing what he thought was best. So be it.
The rest of it, no, this isn't Williams' mess, and whatever Slovis might have thought about all the QB competition talk this week he was nonetheless the voice of reason Saturday night.
"When you talk about accountability, you just start holding people accountable for two weeks you can't expect it to change everything. It takes time. Coach has done a great job of that, but you can't expect it to happen overnight," he reiterated.
Or maybe at all this season. The Trojans will win more games, they might even have more days like their comfortable and confident victory at Washington State, but they also have some obstacles that seem unlikely to go away at this point.
That was the takeaway from Saturday night.
This loss was largely a replay of the 42-28 defeat at home to Stanford two weeks ago (with nearly the same score). Two humbling losses in the Coliseum in which the Trojans were double-digit favorites (11 points Saturday night), struggled early, inflicted setbacks upon themselves and never recovered. That's not a reflection on an interim head coach -- that's a reminder of why the coaching change was made in the first place.
But, yes, it sure was disappointing all the same.
It was Oregon State's first win in the Coliseum since 1-9-6-0. Dwight D. Eisenhower was president then -- he's been dead for 52 years. Just to put it in perspective.
The Beavers had 532 yards of offense. They had 319 rushing yards and averaged 6.3 yards over 51 carries. They had a junior college transfer who opened the season as the backup QB in Chance Nolan look like he was running uncontested passing drills at an Elite 11 camp most of the night, completing 15 of 19 passes for 213 yards, 4 touchdowns and 2 interceptions (1 late after the game was mostly in hand).
Meanwhile, USC had ... no answers.
"We just couldn't stop the run game. We tried multiple things and we just didn't get it done," defensive coordinator Todd Orlando said honestly. "... I tried to be as multiple as I could and tried to try everything we could. We'd get it slowed down and then when we slowed it down we got hit on a pass, we made some critical mistakes and just didn't play well."
Orlando and his defense were very much in the crosshairs of fan venom Saturday night. I've been vocal since the spring expressing confidence in Orlando based on his track record and buying into the notion that with a full year instilling a mentality in this unit -- and refining its understanding of the scheme -- that this would be a better defense. I can't ignore what has happened in two of the last three games, and the Orlando criticism is fair.
But it's also fair to wonder if the Trojans simply don't have the personnel to be a consistently effective defense.
They had 12 missed tackles vs. Oregon State -- some very costly. The linebacker play simply hasn't improved and at a certain point you are what you are. That could be said at a couple other veteran-filled positions too, as there was plenty of blame to go around. And for the third time in four games the Trojans also didn't muster a sack -- in this case not even a single tackle for loss.
"We just didn't make our plays. When the plays came our way we didn't make them 90 percent of the time," junior cornerback Chris Steele said. "It's all going to come back down to who wants it more next week. I feel like we got punched in the chin and not everybody retaliated the right way. ... At the end of the day our coaches put us in positions because they trust us and we just didn't make our plays."
But the tackling, the inability to contain the edge -- that now spans two defensive coordinators and three defensive line coaches. That's just part of the identity of Trojans football at this point.
"It's disappointing. It's absolutely disappointing. It's heart-wrenching," Orlando said. "But like I said before, I'm going to wake up tomorrow morning and we're going to get it righted. These kids care, we all care. We want to bring out a great product and we've got to get better."
Not to be outdone, the USC offense delivered just as much frustration.
Wide receiver Tahj Washington had three backbreaking drops (and Drake London had one as well, but he also had 10 catches for 165 yards). This offense already struggles to create momentum against defenses -- it absolutely cannot afford to undermine itself as well with drive-killing plays.
Slovis was fine in the first half -- 13 of 23 for 156 yards, 1 TD and 1 INT that bounced off the chest of Washington. Add in four more should-have-been completions and another 40 yards or so from those drops and it's a pretty impressive line.
The second half was another story. Slovis was picked off twice more once the Trojans got into desperation mode and had to abandon what had been a productive running game early on. And at a pivotal point when USC absolutely needed to strike, down 28-17 early in the third quarter, the offensive line managed to draw back-to-back false starts to turn a third-and-1 into an ultimately unsuccessful third-and-11. Classic Trojans.
Harrell excused the late interceptions as a product of circumstance and thought Slovis "spun the ball pretty well," but he had his own blunt critique for the offense as a whole.
"It was almost like when adversity hit the energy got sucked out of it. I'm up top [in the press box], but that's what it looked like from up top and that just can't happen," he said. "... There's going to be details all over that tape that I think we're going to look at it, and it's not just going to be drops. It's going to be more yards in the run game out there, it's probably going to be reads that Kedon missed. There's going to be stuff from every position that if you clean up is going to look a lot different.
"When adversity strikes, it can't suck the energy out of us. We've got to keep battling and stay excited to play, because when we do that we're a pretty good football team, and when we're not excited to play it doesn't look like it's supposed to look."
Said Williams: "I got out-coached today. That's the biggest thing -- put the blame on me. And like I said I will fix it."
USC bucked the trend last week and did show poise and resilience in the face of adversity after going down 14-0 at Washington State and then reeling off 45 unanswered points, but that criticism Harrell levied has also been a theme for the program going on several years now.
These issues are ingrained. If Williams wants to take the accountability, that's all well and good, but really to pin all this on him is largely missing the point.
(He's also taken on this significant extra responsibility while dealing with a tough and dire personal matter regarding the health of his father, which can't be easy.)
Maybe thinking anyone could truly fix it all mid-season was also missing the point, though.
"Donte was put in a pretty crazy situation having to step up Week [3] and have to be the head coach," center Brett Neilon said. "Super respectful guy, respects all of us, but he tells the truth and he coaches hard and just an honest man. I think everyone in the room has his back."
I don't doubt that for a second.
Again, though, the question now shouldn't be whether Williams can or can not fix it but rather if it's even fixable without sweeping offseason changes and a true reset.
USC has eight regular-season games left. This team is simply impossible to predict. It could very well put a thumping on Colorado next week and try to spark some fresh momentum anew (for however long it can be sustained). Or this could be the start of a very long two months ahead. The lesson has been reiterated so many times with these Trojans not to go all-in on reactions to one game.
In this case, though, it's just hard to not see this as anything more than the continuation of the last three-plus years.
The unknown variable in forecasting what becomes of the remaining games is whether the players see it that way at this point, or if they can get jumpstarted and moving again one more time before they truly run out of road on this season.
"Same mentality. Win, lose, draw, we're not going to divide as a team," linebacker Ralen Goforth said. "We're a team, we're a family. We're not going to let these speed bumps slow us down or break us up. We're going to keep moving forward.
"It's a gut-wrencher, for sure. You prepare all week, put hours and hours of film in, practice long hours, this is something that really stung, but we're going to keep moving forward."