USC had a chance to save its season, vault back into the national rankings and remain in the broader College Football Playoff picture.

The Trojans had a great chance, for that matter, as they held a 14-point halftime lead and a 7-point fourth-quarter lead on Penn State (now No. 3 in the AP poll) before finding ways to lose, 33-30, in overtime.

That it was the third game in four weeks that USC (3-3, 1-3 Big Ten) lost at the very end while blowing a fourth-quarter lead amplified the emotions and frustration within the fan base afterward.

Coach Lincoln Riley, quarterback Miller Moss and the defense, among others, have all been in the crosshairs of criticism since Saturday.

Normally, we break out our top 10 takeaways from our in-depth film review of the Trojans' performance -- hence, why it's called the First-and-10 -- but this week we had too much to say on five matters in particular.

Here goes ...

The unfortunate truth is that USC’s 2024 season is now over, at least with regard to the most meaningful purposes. With three losses in the sack halfway through the season, whatever hope for a playoff run existed has now all but evaporated, leaving the Trojans with little at stake in terms of postseason achievement. A win against Penn State was essential to staying in the hunt, and the painful reality is that this team should have left the Coliseum with one.

In this game, the Trojans successfully and compellingly addressed some of the biggest concerns regarding their capabilities, with the offensive line turning in a sturdy performance against one of the nation’s best fronts and with the defense finding a way to actually generate pressure with some consistency for what felt like the first time all season. Those turnarounds put USC in the driver’s seat to pull off an upset of tremendous significance, and even with just a couple of minutes left on the clock, it looked like the Trojans were due to deliver.

All the same, they somehow managed to falter once again, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory as mistakes on both sides of the ball shifted momentum relentlessly at the most inopportune of moments.

All three of the Trojans’ losses have now come in similar fashion, with the team seemingly in control of football games in the fourth quarter only to let the win slip away late as the result of some combination of varied mistakes. I have plenty of sincere optimism with regard to the changes that have put USC in position to win these games late, but there’s simply no denying the common thread of an inability to actually win these games. Put bluntly, the Trojans keep suffering deaths by a thousand papercuts, as mistakes big and small from multiple position groups on both sides of the ball add up to eventual losses. There is no singular area of failure on the field that has consistently led to these outcomes -- the mistakes come from everywhere, and this leaves the proverbial finger with only one direction at which to be pointed.

Lincoln Riley has to do better to get his team playing with focus and clarity when it matters most. We can talk about scheme, play-calling and clock management all we like, but what has consistently cost the Trojans week after week is the players’ inability to make the right plays in the right moments; plays that they’ve shown themselves capable of making. Whether that’s a function of nerves getting to them or a lack of attention to detail, the duty of ensuring that players are mentally equipped to handle the moment ultimately falls to the coaching staff. It’s one thing when individual players make isolated errors once in a while; the sport of football is often swung by such moments where the responsibility can only be placed on the individual. However, when these kinds of mistakes accumulate perpetually over the course of multiple games, the culpability can only be traced further up the tree of leadership. Lincoln Riley and his staff simply have to do better at getting the most out of their players when it matters most.

I can’t say exactly what that will entail or look like, or whether Riley will ultimately find himself capable, but doing so is the biggest step remaining to Riley if he wants to truly be one of the elite coaches in this sport.

Unlike many others, I’m not yet ready to completely write off Riley’s ability to take this step. The improvements made to the way this team operates from what we’ve seen over the past two years has been tremendously impressive, a fact that’s understandably been overshadowed by the team’s record so far. Those improvements have been substantial enough to give me hope that Riley is capable of learning from his mistakes and adjusting.

Though this team is now out of the hunt at 3-3, it’s worth reminding ourselves that most did not consider this USC team to be capable of hunting for a playoff spot before the season started based on the makeup of the roster. Though the Trojans have lost three games, the team was in a position to win each and every one of them, something that I feel certain would not have been true in prior years even with the likes of Caleb Williams at quarterback. USC is very close to being a good football team; the Trojans make plays regularly on both sides of the ball and have shown the ability to hang with the country’s elite after an offseason of tremendous overhaul. It’s worth noting that LSU has gone undefeated since USC’s opening victory and looks like it might possess the best offense in CFB, and that this Penn State squad is sincerely one of the most capable and well-rounded teams in the country. Even Wisconsin, though certainly not a top-level team, has now blown out consecutive conference opponents by a combined score of 94-13 since falling to the Trojans. USC can absolutely hang with the big boys -- a fact that cannot be taken for granted given that we all agree its talent is not yet quite up to par with the nation’s best.

But with all of that said, none of it really matters until the wins start to stack up when they matter most. You play to win the game, ultimately, and the Trojans have to start winning. Now, Riley’s test will be maintaining the progress shown across this team despite the gut-punch to its postseason hopes. If USC can keep it together over this significantly easier back end of the schedule and continue to improve as it has, there still remains a path to a 9-3 season ending with a 6-game win streak and a big-time win over a highly-ranked Notre Dame team at home. Though that won’t mean a playoff berth, it would mean the carryover of tremendous positive momentum into the offseason and next year with those effects to be felt by recruits, the fanbase and national audience, and most importantly within the locker room itself. That outcome is still on the table and the Trojans should be capable of securing it, but all will depend on how well this coaching staff is able to learn from its mistakes and clean up the rough edges.

The second half of this schedule is now essentially a new season, and the directive is crystal clear. Riley has to get his team to win every week now, and his ability or inability to do so over these six games will dictate this program’s trajectory.

Painful as it may be, I think it’s worth recounting my thesis of a death by a thousand papercuts as it relates to the Trojans’ performance against Penn State. Those errors big and small occurred not just in the final quarter but across the body of the contest, adding up in their totality to result in a 3-point overtime loss. I hate to belabor the point, but the truth remains that USC was so agonizingly close to winning this game. The Trojans should have won this game. Any one or two of these errors might have flipped the outcome on its head had they been avoided, and most were certainly avoidable. Not all of those came in the closing stages of the game either; the Trojans made plenty of avoidable errors over the entirety of this contest, especially from the second quarter onward.

It’s also worth noting the consistent shabbiness of Big Ten officiating that’s also contributed to the outcomes in this loss and the others, with the same truth applying in which just a call or two being administered correctly might have swung the game. I’ll go over some of those moments as well, with the caveat in mind that it was totally in the Trojans’ power to render the botched calls meaningless all the same if they’d consistently taken care of their own business.

USC miscues:

-Miller Moss played what was likely his worst game as a Trojan, uncharacteristically misplacing a handful of balls and failing to locate the best read in his progression. Most egregious of course was the interception to end the Trojans’ last possession in regulation, which should have instead resulted in a first down and chance to ice the game with a field goal had he completed what should have been a rather easy throw on the slant route to Duce Robinson.

-Ja’Kobi Lane failed to haul in a pass from Moss on a comeback route on the Trojans’ penultimate drive of the first half, leading to a punt just two plays later. Moss threw the ball on time and in rhythm, and though the pass came a bit high, a wide-open Lane allowed the ball to bounce off both of his hands. At a time when the Trojans offense had been rolling, a simple grab from Lane could very possibly have resulted in more points on the board for USC and further changed the complexion of the game.

-On the ensuing third down after Lane’s drop, Riley called a clever drag route to Makai Lemon which only required Quinten Joyner to block a defensive back for about 1 second in order for Lemon to come free for an easy first down and potential big play. Joyner blew the block, resulting in a tackle short of the sticks and forcing a punt.

-To start the second half scoring, Drew Allar threw a deep touchdown pass to tight end Tyler Warren on one of the most unique and well-designed trick plays I’ve ever seen. Penn State lined up in an extremely unorthodox alignment with Warren snapping the football himself from the end of an unbalanced offensive line before a lateral went out wide to a waiting Allar. Allar threw an absolutely perfect ball to the middle of the end zone for Warren, yet Zion Branch did an excellent job of detecting the play and making it over to the catch point despite the fact that the entire defense had initially been bamboozled by the trickery and allowed Warren to run free up the middle. Yet when the moment of truth arrived and Branch had placed himself in perfect position, Branch failed to locate the football or to fight through the catch point after the sensational initial grab made by the tight end. Warren’s catch was a spectacular feat of skill and concentration, but Branch had every opportunity to find the football or at the very least rake it out of Warren’s hands for an incompletion. Instead, he failed to keep fighting through the play and gave up the touchdown, one that very much altered the trajectory of the entire contest.

-As USC started to work more carefully to keep Warren locked up later in the game, a series of miscues from its cornerbacks allowed Allar and the PSU passing game to keep moving downfield. The first and most unfortunate of these was an error from Greedy Vance on the series that resulted in the trick-play touchdown. He was forced to play outside despite his usual role as a pure slot corner as a result of the attrition at the position. Vance, who has been reliable for the Trojans all season, found himself outmatched by a bigger wide receiver out on the boundary. At the release, the receiver managed to get a good push with both hands on Vance’s chest, leading to a stumble from the smaller cornerback. Though Vance made a solid recovery, the created separation was just enough for Allar to fit in a beautifully-thrown fade between the corner and the safety for a gain of 25. Had Vance not stumbled, Anthony Lucas was just a fraction of a second away from smoking the quarterback from the backside, and the play would almost certainly have had to go elsewhere for a smaller gain and resulted in a third down.

-On the theme of cornerback misses, DeCarlos Nicholson had a rough one when rotated into the game during the second half. He first blew his assignment completely on a play-action pass, inexplicably biting on the rolling quarterback instead of playing the zone for which he was responsible and giving up a wide-open deep completion to Warren for 34 yards to the USC 19 midway through the third quarter. Had Nicholson simply been in position, Allar would likely be forced to hold onto the football or to simply check it down.

-Just before that, safety Akili Arnold simply failed to identify the man crossing over deep into his zone, as Arnold only covered naked grass instead. Simply remaining in his allocated zone and gathering depth would have forced Allar to take a shot from the closing pass rush or pushed him to make a risky throw downfield. Instead, Allar hit Harrison Wallace for 25 yards to the Penn State 47.

-Most egregious of all the mistakes in this game were cornerback John Humphrey’s twin pair of fourth-and-long conversions given up on Penn State’s game-tying drive near the end of regulation. On the first fourth-and-7, Humphrey whiffed as Julian Fleming ran a deep dig route against him in one-on-one coverage. Allar threw a perfect dart, Fleming made a difficult outstretched catch and Humphrey was oh-so-close at the catch point. However, the simple mistake that cost USC a game-sealing stop was the alignment Humphrey maintained to the receiver’s outside. In a one-on-one situation like this to the boundary, playing inside-out leverage is critical to force the quarterback to have to throw the ball past the cornerback in order to reach the receiver. Keeping himself just a few inches to the interior would have likely saved the play for Humphrey, who should know that his lack of foot-and-hip quickness makes it harder for him to break across a receiver’s body than it is for other players.

Far worse, however, was the latter conversion on fourth-and-10. With Humprey once again matched up in man coverage against Fleming along the boundary, a USC blitz quickly placed real heat on Allar. The quarterback flung the ball across his body to the backside for an unlikely and pivotal fourth down conversion, resulting once more from Humphrey’s inability to play the situation properly. The cornerback once again ceded inside leverage completely, allowing Fleming to snap off the route deep to create separation. This time, Humphrey played the route even more poorly than on the first conversion, allowing the receiver to completely break free from his coverage for an easy catch. Once again, the defensive call and the performance of the rest of the defense would have easily ended this game for the Trojans had Humphrey maintained just the smallest bit of field awareness.

-Though this one doesn’t qualify as a mistake necessarily, it was certainly a tremendous missed opportunity. On the third-and-10 immediately preceding that fourth-and-10 conversion, Allar went for a deep out route at the sticks with Kamari Ramsey covering him from the inside. Ramsey broke on the ball absolutely perfectly, getting just beneath the receiver and almost snatching an interception with both hands placed cleanly on the football. Ramsey just barely failed to secure the ball to his chest as he fell to the ground, leading to an incompletion rather than a game-ending pick.

-And, of course, Michael Lantz’s missed 45-yard field goal in overtime ultimately cost USC a chance to stay in the game and essentially decided the outcome before Penn State’s offense even touched the ball in overtime. Lantz had been perfect on the day to that point, nailing kicks of 45, 47 and 39 yards prior. Yet he missed this decisive kick by just a sliver to the left, causing all hope to fly out the window and essentially sealing a loss for the Trojans.

Officiating misses:

-On a number of the screen passes to Tyler Warren that resulted in big gains for Penn State, the Nittany Lions had players blocking downfield before the ball reached the tight end for what should have been straightforward offensive pass interference calls. A pivotal one did finally get called on the goal line to overturn a Penn State touchdown, but the others went uncalled for significant gains.

-Perhaps the most egregious and inexplicable call of the day was a low-block penalty called on Walker Lyons on USC’s final possession of the first half. Already up 17-6, the Trojans were on the verge of adding another touchdown to their lead as they beautifully executed a run by Woody Marks up the middle for a gain of about 20 yards to the Penn State 9 with 45 seconds remaining on the clock. Unexpectedly, a flag thrown on Lyons for an illegal low block on the backside wiped the whole play clean, instead moving USC back an additional 15 yards from the line of scrimmage. Upon watching the replay, two things are clear. Most importantly, Lyons’ block did not at all qualify for that designation as he clearly makes contact with his upper body into the torso of the defender -- a clean block that goes uncalled 20 times in every game as it should. More maddeningly perhaps, the block clearly occurred within the tackle box, where the penalty for a low block doesn’t even apply.

Penn State’s offense opened the game with a far more egregious example of such a play as a blocker straight-up dove through Anthony Lucas’ knees on a run play; the only explanation for why that play might have not been flagged was the positioning in the tackle box. Based on that same logic, there’s absolutely no way the call on Lyons was justifiable, even if disregarding the fact that he didn’t commit a low block in the first place. That call almost singularly prevented the Trojans from going into halftime with an 18-point lead.

-On a similar note, Ramsey was called for an illegal low block on defense on what was already a short gain for Penn State. Ramsey was pushed in the back, causing him to fall into a blocker’s lower body, which should always invalidate a penalty. This play ended up not mattering much due to a Desman Stephens pick later in the drive, but the same logic applied to a roughing-the-passer call on Lucas later in the game in which he was pushed from behind leading him to fall into Allar’s legs.

-Lastly, a twin pair of uncalled pass interference penalties on USC’s lone overtime possession stalled their last chance to get in the endzone. Though the defender essentially tackling Lane on third down before the arrival of the ball was close enough that the no-call was understandable, the first down smothering of Lemon down the sideline certainly was not. Lemon ran an out-and-up double move to get free, but the cornerback held on for dear life through the break, not taking his hands off the receiver for a second from the initial move to the point that the ball sailed by. The referee stood right alongside the pair as the wrestling match took place, yet chose not to throw a flag that would have radically reshaped that offensive possession.