USC's quarterback change this week has injected new intrigue and interest in the rest of this otherwise lost season for the 4-5 Trojans.

Jayden Maiava is largely an unknown to most Trojans fans -- at least those who haven't binged 2023 UNLV game film -- having attempted all of 11 passes this season along with a dazzling rushing touchdown in Week 2.

But they also know enough to be tantalized by his big arm and athleticism.

In this week's First-and-10, we delve deep into what should and shouldn't be expected of Maiava in his first start next week against Nebraska -- after the bye this weekend.

We also take coach Lincoln Riley to task, delve deeper into Makai Lemon's impressive performance, Zachariah Branch's potential breakout, D'Anton Lynn's strong work with a limited defense, a deep dive into the state of the defensive line and the impact of two veteran defensive backs returning to action.

In this deeply cursed season, the Trojans have found themselves re-living the same brutal defeat Saturday after Saturday, stuck in a Groundhog Day of the football gods’ choosing. Despite four quarters riddled with errors and questionable decision-making, USC once again did just enough to place itself in the driver’s seat by the game’s end, only to then crumble to ashes in the moment of truth. It seems that this Trojans team is not only incapable of winning close games but incapable of losing them any other way than this. The painful truth is that they were talented enough to have won all of those games, but not good enough to get it done.

Other teams -- take Vanderbilt or Indiana -- are not nearly as talented, but they’re good. The difference is coaching. Perhaps the Sisyphean ordeal of this season is divine punishment for Lincoln Riley’s inability to learn from his mistakes. A perpetual failure to close out games has been a criticism of Riley’s teams for years, and this season has been a masterclass in that art as the Trojans have found inventive new ways of blowing winnable contests week after week. There’s blame to be distributed at a number of levels, but at the end of the day, Riley has to be held accountable for his inability to put his players in the best positions to succeed and to bring out their best play in late-game situations.

The problem is that the only person in a position to meaningfully hold Riley accountable for his deficiencies is himself, and he appears either unable or unwilling (perhaps both) to do so. Week after week, Riley makes the same mistakes as a coach and play-caller, and his players continue to commit the same errors that keep costing them games. Ryan Young did a fantastic job of examining the issue at hand in his column from Sunday, so I won’t belabor the argument too much with specifics. The point ultimately is that Riley is far too stubborn for his own good or that of the team. We saw it in the time it took for him to finally move on from former defensive coordinator Alex Grinch, and it manifests regularly in his refusal to make big-picture adjustments to his predetermined strategies. Sticking to your guns is important, but in the most dynamic of all sports, adaptability is key. Riley appears dead-set on getting things done his way, his intractability seemingly derived from ultimate confidence in his own smarts.

Despite watching Miller Moss struggle throwing the deep ball for weeks, did he ask him to stop throwing low probability fades? No. Despite the fact that the Trojans have run the ball well all year, has he allowed the running game to take the reins in place of a shaky passing attack? Also no. Has he learned to hold onto his timeouts to the end of halves, to feed the ball to the hot hand or to pull his favored veterans after prolonged stretches of poor play? No, no, and no, even though he’s had years of results to teach him otherwise. Until Riley learns to self-reflect, his ceiling as a head coach, as well as that of his team, is fated to remain stunted.

Following Saturday’s game, I prepared for the unsavory task of laying out the case for a change at quarterback. Just a few days later, the case no longer needed to be made, as the Trojans are rolling with Jayden Maiava as the starter coming out of this week’s bye. Miller Moss’ latest performance was an exhibition in variance, with excellent highs offset by unacceptable lows. As impressive as the good was, the bad was representative of the issues that have plagued Moss for much of the season and increasingly so as the games have piled up.

Moss’ key strengths are supposed to be his ball-placement and his decision-making skills, both of which are non-negotiables for his success given his limitations elsewhere. Both of those traits have been unreliable as of late, and the Washington game was no exception. Though he was protected very well for most of this contest, Moss frequently found himself unable to process his reads appropriately. Despite having all the time in the world to operate from the pocket, he often failed to locate open receivers on time and instead forced the ball into inadvisable windows. Though neither of his first two interceptions in the game should be held against him, his third was emblematic of the aforementioned problem and extremely costly. With plenty of time in the pocket, Moss tried to rip a dig route to Kyron Hudson behind the drifting linebacker. It was a spectacularly arrogant pass attempt, necessitating a perfect throw into a very small window for any chance at a completion. Moss’s throw was far from perfect, though, leading to a relatively easy interception for Carson Bruener which set the Huskies up for a short field and their only touchdown of the second half. Had he expanded his field of vision just a bit, Moss would have instead found a more open Makai Lemon over the middle of the field.

At various other junctures, Moss similarly failed to identify the right place to go with the ball and found himself unable to place his passes in optimal position. He repeatedly eschewed safer targets for shots to well-covered receivers, often failing even then to place the ball appropriately for his teammate to have a chance at reeling it in. As has been the case all year, Moss’ height and low launch-angle led to multiple passes being batted down at the line, erasing opportunities for significant gains. Even on some of his completions, Moss’ limitations showed. On an early deep ball to Zachariah Branch, Moss’ lack of arm strength resulted in a fluttering pass which required the receiver to work back for the reception, ending in a gain of 20 yards when a well-placed go-ball should have resulted in a walk-in touchdown for the speedster.

The missed opportunities accumulated by Moss kept the Trojan offense from taking control of this game. The defense ultimately held Washington to 26 points in total and gave up just one touchdown in the second half, a touchdown that came off the short field given up by Moss’ interception. A clean, efficient game from Moss would have been enough to take the Trojans to victory, but he wasn’t capable of delivering that. Since the Penn State game, that’s been the case far too often.

I want to be clear in stating that the good from Moss remains very good. Against Washington, he showed off tremendous pocket management skills and tossed a number of beautiful throws, headlined by a fantastic 37-yard touchdown strike to Lemon threaded over two defenders. Despite his recent struggles with decision-making and ball placement, we know that Moss has it within himself to not only succeed but to excel in those regards because we’ve already seen him do so. Right now, it’s clear that the signal-caller has fallen into a bad funk of sorts, perhaps influenced by the deluge of hits he took early in the year before the offensive line took its step forward. I still believe that Moss is capable of being a very good college quarterback, and potentially one with the capacity to play in the NFL. Right now, however, he’s not there, and the right move for the Trojans is to see what they’ve got in Maiava

Now, all eyes turn to the redshirt sophomore transfer at quarterback. Maiava will be taking over with every chance to entrench himself in the starting role for next year with his performance over these last few games, much as Moss was able to do in the Holiday Bowl last year. Maiava’s runway will be significantly longer and perhaps more difficult, as he’ll have to deal with a feisty Nebraska team and a Notre Dame squad that seems slated for a CFP berth over that stretch. There are very good reasons to get excited for Maiava’s turn at the reins, namely the unique set of gifts he brings to the position.

Maiava is a near-ideal physical archetype for the quarterback position, standing at 6-foot-4 and weighing 220 pounds. Despite his tremendous size, Maiava is no statue in the pocket. The young quarterback is a very capable mover with the football in his hands, with both the quickness and field awareness to evade would-be tacklers in both the pocket and open field.

However, it’s worth noting that though Maiava is an effective athlete, he’s not necessarily a game-breaking threat with the ball in his hands. Some USC fans, perhaps in the context of contrast with Moss, have made Maiava out to be an elite rusher who should figure to offer a game-changing presence as a runner. However, as plenty of UNLV fans will tell you, Maiava isn’t a dominant runner of the football. He’s got some nice burst and wiggle for his size and is tough to bring down but doesn’t quite have the quickness or vision necessary to truly be a high-end runner.

Additionally, he had serious issues with keeping hold of the football in his lone season as a starter in 2023, fumbling 6 times over the course of the season. As a whole, ball-security was the primary issue with Maiava’s game in 2023. In addition to those 6 fumbles, Maiava threw 10 interceptions and committed a total of 24 turnover-worthy plays by PFF’s charting over the course of the year. It’s safe to expect that a quarterback’s ball security would improve after his first full season as a starter, but as of now we’ve hardly seen enough to know if Maiava will be able to kick his habit of taking dangerous risks with the football.

This offense will ask very different things of him than what he handled in UNLV’s Go-Go scheme, requiring a better reading of his progressions and the ability to layer the football effectively at the intermediate levels of the field. Though there’s plenty we need to see Maiava do first before any real confidence can set in, the primary reason for optimism in the young quarterback is borne of the spectacular character of that thing attached to his right shoulder. Maiava possesses a rocket-launcher for an arm, one that was already clearly NFL-ready on his freshman tape. The ball comes off his hand seemingly without effort, whipped downfield with arc and pace even when the quarterback fires it with just a flick of his wrist.