After USC's Tuesday practice, coach Lincoln Riley confirmed the expected news that redshirt freshman safety Zion Branch is out for the season with an unspecified leg/knee injury.

"Yeah, he’s going to be out for the season. Had a procedure done this morning. Hate it for him, it was his first start, ugh, just terrible luck, but I mean that kid is so – he’s so headstrong and so positive and so driven, he’ll come back way stronger from it," Riley said. "He obviously, to come in here and earn the free safety job as a freshman I’d say is pretty unique, so we were – pleased is probably not the right word -- but his progress that he made throughout the year, coming back obviously [from] the injury his first year, handled it great, just earned more and more opportunities as we went on and played very well in his time.

"So it’ll sting for this team to lose him and I’ll have to uplift him. But he’s a strong cat."

Riley also talked about why he believes the USC defense can rise to the occasion against No. 5 Washington and No. 6 Oregon the next two weeks, why the Trojans continue to struggle at giving up explosive plays, his decision-making process on the two-point conversion decisions the last two games and more.

Watch the full interview here and scroll down for a complete transcript of Riley's comments.

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What is Zion Branch's status and how does that affect the depth at safety with Max Williams already out?

"Yeah, he’s going to be out for the season. Had a procedure done this morning. Hate it for him, it was his first start, ugh, just terrible luck, but I mean that kid is so – he’s so headstrong and so positive and so driven, he’ll come back way stronger from it. He obviously, to come in here and earn the free safety job as a true freshman, or as a freshman, I’d say is pretty unique so we were – pleased is probably not the right word – but his progress that he made throughout the year, coming back obviously the injury his first year, handled it great, just earned more and more opportunities as we went on and played very well in his time. So it’ll sting for this team to lose him and I’ll have to uplift him. But he’s a strong cat.

"Depth wise, obviously not ideal, but that’s just part of it with the season, you're going to have these things. We’ve trained a lot of different guys in the secondary and hopeful that some of these guys that are rehabbing and haven’t been able to be on the field with us the last few weeks could also potentially come back and make an impact as well. But want to see how the week goes. We’ve got to be ready to proceed without all of them and we’ve got a plan together that we feel confident about that we can play well Saturday."

What's the nature of his injury, is it related to the last one?

"Yeah, it’s related (to last year) but I don’t like to get too far with the guys for personal reasons."

What has been the common denominator in giving up explosive plays?

"A little tough to generalize. The other day for us, it was simply coming out of gaps in the run game and we made a couple of mistakes in the secondary to compound that so instead of coming out of a gap and getting tackled for a 12 or a 15 yard run, you’re coming out of a gap – and that was a point of emphasis coming into the game, we knew that Ott has great speed and if he gets into the open field, he’s tough to catch so obviously letting him out early was not ideal, now, we responded pretty well after that, pretty much put a lid on the run game the rest of the day, but you can’t give up those. Yeah, I think the challenge for us here going forward is those.

"Right now, we’re kind of the same as a team all the way around: we do a lot of good things, we don’t need to fix 60 plays, but there’s about five to 10 a game, that we gotta fix, we gotta do better because they’re self-inflicted errors and they’re taking the pressure off of our opposition and they’re putting it back on us to have to make up for that and have to make a big play to counter it or have to come back in a game to win a game. If you just keep putting yourself in that situation – listen, if our fight and our culture and our desire to win wasn’t great, we wouldn’t have come back and won two of those. So I'm thrilled about that, but we definitely want to play cleaner. There’s five to 10 really on both sides of the ball that need to get better for us to put pressure on them. Now, the great thing for us, if you flip that and do that, which we gotta go do it, the nature of these games can change very quickly because a lot of them hinge on those plays. So obviously something we gotta do better at and something that we’re addressing with the guys so they’re crystal clear on it and we gotta do a great job of it here in this game."

What went into the two-point conversion decisions the past couple of week -- is that a chart or gut feel dictating those?

"Little bit of both. We have a chart that gives us, that's obviously analytics-based that gives us a thought process on where you want to do it. Some of it is, and I've always said I don't want to be the coach that, well I just made this decision based solely on analytics. I think that's at times a cop out. There's feel and flow of the game and confidence to execute it or confidence to stop it. There's how many possessions are left in the game. Charts the other day were pretty strong to go for it. I was lukewarm on one of them -- the first one just because it was so early in the half and the nature of the game, it was such a heavy possession game, there was so many possessions I knew there was a lot left to unfold. So it was one of those, the chart was not 50-50, but in my mind it was 50-50 and decided to go for it. We had exactly what we wanted and didn't catch the ball. But yeah, we haven't done too many, but every now and then you get into those situations where they come up and we've actually had more here in the last few weeks than maybe we've had my entire time here at 'SC."

With the 5-10 adjustments you want to make defensively, what gives you confidence you can make those adjustments and play a complete game against three ranked teams to finish the year?

"Ahh, cause a turnover, the momentum that that creates there in the fourth quarter up at Cal, and then do the worst thing imaginable the very next play offensively and turn it right back over to them on the plus-40-yard-line, flip the entire momentum of the whole thing and give their offensive tremendous field position, and we go four-and-out stop just like that. That's what gives me confidence that we can do it, because when we do it the results are really, really good. We've got to correct them on all sides -- that's bad offense, it puts the defense in terrible positions and we've had too much of that here the last few weeks as well. It all goes together. We quit making those mental mistakes, the team's going to be in better position. The offense plays better, the defense will be in better position. The defense plays better, the offense will be in better position. Special teams, like it all feeds off one another. The bottom line is the team's fighting like crazy, we've got to play a little better and we expect to."