USC set about to reset its season after a 4-5 start, making the quarterback change from Miller Moss to Jayden Maiava and coming out of the bye week with an emphasis on maximizing the three games remaining.

So far, the Trojans are two-for-two in that goal with the toughest challenge remaining Saturday against No. 5-ranked Notre Dame (10-1) in the Coliseum.

USC's 19-13 win over UCLA last weekend wasn't pretty and only furthered several paramount criticisms about this team and coach Lincoln Riley, but there was a lot of good to be taken from it too.

We break it down from all sides in the weekly First-and-10 with our 10 most notable (and always in-depth) takeaways after reviewing the film.

As far as rivalry games go this one was slow, ugly and at times difficult to watch. There’s plenty worth bemoaning (and I certainly will), but ultimately, the fact that the Trojans won and secured bowl eligibility is the most important of all. As we discussed a few weeks ago, the most critical directive for this team over this final stretch of games was to win at all costs. This team has been in position to win every game this season and failed at an abnormal rate to close out those opportunities, which is why I believe winning to end the year and managing to secure a bowl berth restores some much-needed positive energy for both the locker room and recruiting momentum.

Though both of these last two contests have been much closer than they should have been and leave plenty of questions still to ask, the fact that USC has come away from both with victories matters above all. A loss to UCLA last weekend would have been absolutely crippling to morale, and though the Trojans flirted dangerously with such an outcome, the eventual victory leaves everyone involved feeling much better off.

Now, the Trojans have a chance to carry the good vibes into a home matchup with a highly-ranked Notre Dame team to close out their regular season. A win there would lead to a surprisingly sunny feel to the end of USC’s season and likely do wonders for its trajectory heading into 2025.

With that said, so many of the concerns that have persisted over the course of this season continued to serve as points of frustration in this one, most of them on the offensive side of the ball and directly attributable to the head coach. Foremost among those is the lack of rushing attempts called for in the game plan, with the Trojans handing the ball off to their backs just 22 times and giving Jayden Maiava only a couple of designed runs. Riley’s desire to lean on the passing attack once again put the USC offense in a precarious position as small misses piled up, leading to a much tighter game than the Trojans should have faced. To be fair, the USC offense didn’t have all that many snaps to work with in this game and the situations it found itself in often favored the pass. All the same, Riley’s desire to outsmart the room by throwing often on first downs, in the red zone and short-yardage situations is hard to justify when he doesn’t have a reliably efficient passing game at his disposal.

It would be one thing if the Trojans featured a clear-cut stud at quarterback and were able to rely on their receivers to consistently show up in key moments, but neither has been true this year. There are plenty of examples to pull from this game, but none so frustrating as the decision to have Maiava throw a go-ball deep down the sideline on third-and-3, leading predictably to a fourth down (that USC wouldn't convert). Riley’s inability to adjust his approach based on the particular strengths and weaknesses of his personnel has been a paramount frustration all season, and this game was just one more microcosm of that stubborness.

His insistence on throwing fades at the goal line was another notable example of this tendency, as Maiava was asked to throw at least four of them, all going incomplete. The goal line fade is a notoriously low-efficiency play call and one that I personally hate to see employed more than twice a game unless a receiver is absolutely dominating at the catch point. Outside of the red zone, the logic changes slightly, but it remains a rather difficult type of throw to connect on. All the same, Riley has prioritized the fade ball from all parts of the field throughout the season, at times asking Miller Moss to throw a handulf of them per game. Why, you might ask? My assumption is that Riley imagined coming into the year that USC’s tall receiver group (6-foot-6 Duce Robinson, 6-4 Ja’Kobi Lane, 6-1 Kyle Ford and 6-1 Kyron Hudson) would consistently dominate smaller defensive backs on this type of throw. It’s a pretty reasonable line of thinking to start with. Yet after weeks of evidence clearly demonstrating that this strategy isn’t working, Riley seems to remain hellbent on breaking through and proving that it was a smart one all along.

This seems to be the pattern of thinking that colors so much of the head coach’s decision-making, which rarely works out for the team’s best interest. Ultimately, I do think Riley is a smart and capable football coach. The good accomplished over the course of his young career is extremely impressive, and those results do not simply fall from trees. However, as the rest of college football has learned to adapt to him, he’s proved unwilling to adapt himself to circumstances as they change around him, both within his roster and from the outside. Until Riley becomes more malleable and capable of self-criticism, it’s difficult to imagine this team really taking the next step.

Maiava’s stat line from his second start as a Trojan wasn’t particularly impressive. He threw for 221 yards and 1 touchdown, completing just 54% of his 35 pass attempts while adding a total of just 5 yards on the ground even when filtering out sack yardage. The numbers paint a thoroughly unspectacular picture, and the commentary from fans during the game aligned in that way.

I think that’s a bit unfair. For starters, the most important thing Maiava did in this game was to avoid turning the ball over. His tendency to give the ball away with his spotty decision-making has been the most problematic part of his game dating back to last season, and was the primary reason that the Trojans didn’t win more comfortably against Nebraska last week. Against UCLA, Maiava was noticeably more careful with the football, rarely throwing it into dangerous windows and taking better care of it in the pocket. Though he did fumble the ball once on a sack, I have to point out that UCLA’s Jay Toia clearly jumped offside to create the penetration.

As far as Maiava’s low completion percentage, there’s a lot to be said about factors outside of his control. Two of his incompletions in the red zone were absolutely perfect passes into the hands of his receivers where only they could have caught them, one to Walker Lyons and one to Kyron Hudson. Another well-placed fade to Kyle Ford was stymied by yet another obvious-yet-uncalled pass interference, and Ja’Kobi Lane failed to haul in yet another as he tried to go for a spinning one-hander rather than trying to get both gloves on the ball. Lane also failed to snag an out-route on fourth down that sailed through both hands, perhaps the most egregious “drop” of the night for any Trojans receiver. Most infuriating of all however was the pop-pass on which the referee played perfect defense in order to break up what would have almost certainly been a touchdown pass to Lake McRee otherwise.

Though Maiava’s accuracy isn’t perfectly consistent yet, it’s much better than what the 54% completion rate shows. When the called plays are low-percentage fade shots (five times in this game!), all he can do is put the ball in the best spot possible, which he did rather reliably. Elsewhere, Maiava showed some sensational accuracy and arm talent throughout this contest.

Take a look at this perfect seam ball to McRee:

Or this frozen rope that traveled 40-yards through the air to hit Makai Lemon perfectly in stride:

There was also a perfect crossing route over the middle to Duce Robinson, a couple of perfect balls to the sideline and an absolute laser to thread the needle between two defenders to hit McRee on a slant. Maiava’s arm is capable of achieving things that most quarterbacks can only dream of, and he’s already putting those throws on tape through two starts at USC. The lapses of his accuracy and decision-making at times remain concerns, but I felt that he did a better job of controlling both in this contest than he did against Nebraska. Those should keep developing with time, but what gives Maiava the X-factor right at this moment is his tremendous ability as a playmaker.

For a player of his size, the elusiveness he possesses simply isn’t natural. Maiava can duck, dive, weave and redirect with notable ease, able to maintain balance through contact and deliver the football from most any platform.

This, you simply can’t teach. Maiava’s gifts and natural feel for the game make him a threat to extend any given play and to convert with either his legs or arm. That’s the kind of threat that every defense has nightmares about, and the kind teams had to consider every time they faced SC for the past two years. Maiava isn’t quite Caleb Williams yet, of course, as his awareness isn’t as developed both with regard to the pressure around him and his receivers downfield. All the same, what he already brings to the table as a creator makes this offense far tougher to guard for opponents. If Maiava can just continue to clean up the little things little by little, he’s got more than enough already going for him to take a huge leap forward in the near future.

There are guys who play football, and there are football players. Makai Lemon is of the latter variety, a man who embodies the spirit of the sport so deeply I have to imagine his nucleotides code for it. His natural physical gifts are considerable, but it’s their pairing with Lemon’s tenacity and dogged aggression that make him a menace. The sophomore wants to dominate at everything he does on the field and he plays like it.

When he plays receiver, you can see it every step of the way, from his determination as a blocker, his tactical prowess as a route runner, and his need to bring the ball in no matter what. Lemon hasn’t seen the ball come his way very often since Maiava took over, but he made the most of his opportunities against UCLA as he caught his 2 passes for 69 yards -- with 64 of those yards coming on what was almost certainly one of the best passing connections of the year for the Trojans, as Lemon smoked his defender on a post route for the enormous gain.

Lemon is probably the best receiver on this football team, but that’s not all he is. Since taking over kick-returning duties from Zachariah Branch, he’s been fantastic in that phase of the game, routinely ripping off big returns. Against UCLA, Lemon was once again a force when taking kickoffs, ripping off long runback of 41 yards and totalling 88 yards on his three attempts. He’s been one of the best kick returners in the country since taking over duties for the Trojans, averaging a Big Ten-leading 29.25 yards per attempt and shortening the field for the offense on a consistent basis.

His special teams contributions extend beyond that, however, as Lemon also serves as a gunner on the punt coverage team to great effect. He made a fantastic play on one of Eddie Czaplicki’s booming punts in this game, tracking the ball down the field perfectly before fielding it right at the UCLA 1 to pin the Bruins at the shadow of their own goal line.

Lemon’s ability to do all of these things well is derived partially of his athletic gifts, but I think his natural, unquantifiable feel for the game is what makes him able to succeed in so many ways. He instinctively knows how the players around him are moving and what he can do to manipulate them, much in the way that Caleb Williams did. Speaking of quarterbacks…

No one is going to call Lemon’s passing form pretty, but I’ll be damned if that isn’t a perfect pass. That ball pops off his hand with serious zip; I feel like its halfway to its target before I can actually see it stabilize on the video. If he doesn’t manage to complete this throw, there’s every chance that the Trojans don’t end up scoring a touchdown to finish the drive and take the lead. Despite his overall lack of targets in the passing game, Lemon’s impact on this contest just can’t be understated as he finished with 69 receiving yards, 88 kick return yards and 39 passing yards.

That’s a football player.