The most important offseason of Lincoln Riley's coaching career is upon him.

Two years after being hailed as USC's savior, a stunning coup for the Trojans to lure him away from Oklahoma and the long-awaited fix to all of the program's problems, Riley is now square in the crosshairs of fans' ire after the 7-5 mark and five losses in six games to finish the regular season.

There is real discontent within a suddenly re-rankled fan base. There are doubts again about the direction of the program. Worse, there are fears about how humbling the Trojans' Big Ten debut could be next season (with LSU and Notre Dame as non-conference games).

Riley has to first and foremost hire a new defensive coordinator and answer critics who question his ability to fix that side of the ball. He has to figure out his quarterback situation for 2024, with star Caleb Williams presumably headed to the NFL draft. He has to try to add to a lackluster high school recruiting haul that ranks 20th less than a month out from the early signing period, while again needing a substantial transfer portal haul to try again to bolster the defensive shortcomings.

And he understands all of this -- he does.

"I know our guys are disappointed, coaches are disappointed, I'm disappointed, I know our fans are disappointed, and they should be. There's no excuses. It's below what we expect here. It's below the standard," Riley said after the loss to UCLA two Saturdays ago. "I've got to do a much better job. I own all of that, and I'm going to fight my ass off in every single way to make sure this thing gets to where it's supposed to be."

All of the pushback he gave to criticism earlier in the season, the resolute retorts that all was actually fine gave way over the final weeks and mounting losses. Riley himself was humbled through this.

"I mean, there's no way to look at this and say I did any kind of a good job and we got the result that we did in the second half of the season. I've got to be better in every single way possible," he said. "... It sucks right now, it hurts right now, but I've never been more motivated and had more of a fire in my belly than I do right now."

He even, surprisingly, gave credence to a question about whether the culture that has been at the center of his rebuild here endured a setback or was lacking the second half of this season.

"It would be interesting to go back and take stock of that," he said. "... I would look at some of [the resilience we showed] and say there was definitely growth, but certainly not winning some of those close games, playing a game like we did [vs. UCLA], I'd say there's still obviously clearly a lot of work to be done."

That right there sums it all up -- Riley clearly has a long way to go in delivering on his promises and own expectations for this program.

Starting with this pivotal offseason.

While there is still a bowl game to be played for USC, our TrojanSports.com staff came together this week to dissect the criticism of Riley -- what's fair, what's overblown -- and how he goes about fixing this defense, plus our picks for team MVPs (non-Caleb Williams division), most improved players, players we think can take the biggest leaps in 2024 and bowl game projections.

We cover it all in an extra-thorough, 10-question roundtable ...

1. What do you make of all the Lincoln Riley backlash that has come out from national media and, of course, the fans?

Tajwar Khandaker: "As we’ve discussed over the course of the year, I do believe that many of the criticisms of Riley this season have been warranted, both on the micro and macro scales. Now, I do feel that those legitimate criticisms have crossed the line into silliness pretty often, both among fans and the media, often characterized by an inability to give Riley credit for the things he does and has done at a very high level over the years. That Riley is an elite offensive play-caller and designer shouldn’t be up for debate -- anyone who’s seriously observed his offenses through his tenure as head coach should be well aware of that fact.

"One of the allegations thrown around with impunity has been that Riley has only been successful off the backs of the superstar quarterbacks who’ve carried him, an allegation that I’m fairly certain each of those passers would give the same answer to -- Riley has adapted his offense each time to uniquely fit the skill set of the quarterbacks he’s worked with in order to bring out their best. And he’s gotten their best; every quarterback that’s come under his tutelage has been pretty obviously better off for the experience. That’s the reason they all attribute credit to him, the reason they came to him in the first place, and the reason that young quarterbacks everywhere still seek him out. What did Nick Saban tell Jalen Hurts when he was considering his options as an Alabama transfer? 'You need to go to Oklahoma. They got the best coach to develop you as a quarterback.' Despite his national-championship winning successes at Alabama, the prevailing opinion was that Hurts would never be capable of earning a starting job as an NFL quarterback due to his perceived deficiencies as a passer. Riley took the one year he had with Hurts and made the most of his unique set of talents, building an offense that allowed for his legs to be an every-down advantage while building up the quarterback’s confidence and competence in the kinds of passing concepts that NFL scouts wanted to see more of. Now, Hurts is one of the league’s most exciting young talents at the position, and at the helm of what might be the best team in all of football.

"Riley’s acumen as a developer of the most important position in the sport simply can’t be denied. I do sincerely believe that Riley created the most productive offense possible to cater to Caleb Williams’ skill set -- a far cry from what many have been describing as simply letting the former Heisman winner go out there and pull wins out of a hat in his head coach’s name. Clear as day, I can guarantee this; you’ll see how much the structure of this offense changes when it’s not designed for Williams to be the man under center.

"Riley is an elite offensive mind, period, but that certainly doesn’t mean he’s perfect. Many of the criticisms levied at him by professionals and laymen alike over the past few months have a legitimate basis. I think he has a penchant for getting too clever for his own good sometimes as he tries to outscheme the opponent, leading to unnecessarily convoluted situations for the team. Though I give him plenty of credit as a run-game designer, I also think he struggles to accept the need to run the ball late -- a fact that will persistently hamstring his offenses in big games.

"As a head coach, I think Riley has opened himself up to justified criticism on a number of fronts. The first and most obvious is the character of his defenses, which have consistently lacked in discipline, physicality and fundamental soundness. Much has been made of whether or not the atmosphere he creates on his teams allows for better defensive football to be played. I think it’s hard to say that for sure until we see a season of his defense coordinated by someone but Alex Grinch (the Mike Stoops years were too early in Riley’s career for me to make much of them). Either way, Riley allowed that kind of defensive football to persist unchallenged for far too long -- that much is undeniable. Whether that was a result of awful football judgement or an excess of personal loyalty may be up for debate, but the culpability falls on the head coach all the same. I’m still of the mind that Riley has the chance to redeem himself in this regard with the right moves going forward, but there’s no getting past the blame borne squarely on his shoulders for the failure of the USC defense these past two years.

"As a whole, I also believe Riley deserves ire for the lack of discipline across the board exhibited by the team this season. The team’s inability to get out of its own way on both sides of the ball – whether through penalties or by lack of situational awareness – was a constant issue from the first game to the last. The fact that this was never ironed out is a major red flag on the head coach’s part, especially given that it’s been a problem on some of his teams in the past.

"Lastly, Riley’s apparent refusal to acknowledge mistakes or to make significant adjustments has rubbed many people the wrong way. I understand a coach’s desire to play his cards close to the chest and to project a strong sense of confidence in himself and his squad, but I have to agree that Riley has done so at the risk of appearing disingenuous at best and clueless at the worst with regard to the issues that persistently plagued his football team. I’m certainly not here to lecture him on good communications practice, but it’s not hard for me to see why his weekly comments in conjunction with the team’s performance on the field has led to a souring of opinion amongst much of the viewing public."

Ryan Young: "Note to self, don't let Tajwar go first anymore ...

"Well-stated on all fronts. I'll try not to be too redundant, though I have a lot of thoughts here, and I may be even more staunch in my stance that the sea change in sentiment toward Riley is so wildly over the top. There is a tendency for those passionate about something (especially college football fans) to see things go poorly against expectations and thus presume that every facet of the operation is in total and irreparable shambles. Everything has to be so extreme these days, when the reality is never on either polar end of the spectrum. Let's not mince words, though -- this was a bad season for the Trojans and for Riley especially. There's no getting around that, period, and there are some very fair and deserving criticisms to levy his way. Let's start there ...

"First, the shift in messaging is concerning as it reflects that Riley didn't see any of this coming and is trying to recalibrate the situation as he makes sense of it on the fly. He is the one who stated time and again in his earliest press conferences that he and this staff were here to compete for championships -- immediately and with that being an every-year expectation. He is the one who said before the Cotton Bowl last year that his 11-win debut team would be the least talented he ever coached at USC. He very compelling and confidently touted the overhauled front seven of the defense in the spring and summer and how the Trojans had "more good players, less bad players" this year. He doubled, tripled and quadrupled down on Alex Grinch and said he just knew the defense would be better this year. He pushed back with moderate indignation at the critical questions that came during USC's 6-0 start, as many pointed out to him the cracks in the foundation (especially on defense) while he said that was the perspective of 'untrained eyes.' And now that things did go south with five losses in the six games since, he has changed tune a bit and pushed the 'We knew this was going to be a climb' refrain while at one point this season saying that any talk of championship expectations this year came from the outside -- not from him or this team -- and that those expectations may have weighed on the players to a negative effect.

"I mean, I get it to an extent. When you're in the role he's in, you always want to project strength, stability and upward trajectory. It's important for recruiting, it may be important internally for morale. But the contradictions do strain the credibility of his messaging to the fans, who happily digested every word of the confident hype initially in his tenure. There's simply no way Riley believed it was remotely possible he'd be in this position after Year 2, coming off the great success of Year 1, and I don't think there is any convincing way to spin it otherwise. I would have just owned the reality that it was a setback and disappointing and that he remains as confident as ever that it'll prove to be a blip on the way forward. I think he worries too much about perception and messaging in general, as evidenced by the weekly reiterations that this team was but a handful of plays away from ... something significant. That's not the way it works -- you get good breaks, you get bad breaks and they usually even out over time. In isolation, yes, I can see how several of those games could have turned out in USC's favor (like, say, the final sequence against Utah). But the Trojans just as easily could have lost the Arizona and Cal games at the end and been 5-7, if one wants to apply that reasoning that all 50-50 situations could have gone one way or the other. So I share the criticisms on those fronts.

"And, obviously, he got the Grinch decision wrong. I was in the minority of understanding why he retained Grinch after last season, believing that there simply wasn't the talent or depth for the defense to be much better than it was and that it thus wasn't a fair evaluation, but it became pretty blatantly clear that the unit was not at all improved this year and was in fact worse despite the talent and depth upgrades. Beyond anything, it became clear that Grinch's message wasn't resonating with the players. I don't know if firing Grinch any sooner in the season would have necessarily changed the fate of things, but where I am critical is wondering why Riley was so aggressively dismissive of the critiques of the defense throughout the season. Did he really not see what everybody else saw? More to the point, as an elite offensive coach who has outschemed defensive coordinators for years, could he not see the obvious vulnerabilities in USC's defensive scheme that opposing OCs (like him) would attack, and at least address those areas? Like, how on every third-and-long situation, the opposing team knew if it just waited a few moments for the overpursuit, that the QB would have green grass to run for the first down -- every time? Those are areas where I would have liked to have seen Riley make an impact, at least.

"All of that said, I do not at all get the macro criticisms that Riley doesn't know how to run a program or be a successful head coach. The first six years of his head coaching career are simply too substantial a sample size to not warrant credit and respect. One does not go 66-13 with three College Football Playoff berths over six seasons by fluke or happenstance. USC fans are presently stressing out fearful that the program can't land an elite defensive coordinator, and you think the Trojans would find a better head coach than Riley right now? He took over a tire fire, inherited a roster severely lacking talent and led it to 11 wins and the brink of the CFP. Yes, he had Caleb Williams to lead the way, but Williams was only here because of Riley. Just like the other elite QBs he's coached before and those he will coach in the future. To be quite honest, everything he's saying now about how the road to the top is jagged and it was always going to take time would have been fair to say when he arrived, because he took over a disaster that absolutely needed time to fix. The earlier criticism is that he didn't say those things then, and is now doing so after the fact, which speaks to him being caught off guard by the realities. But the general sentiment on its own is not wrong.

"The hyperbole in response to the struggles has gone so far past reasonable to the point of people alleging he doesn't even care to have a good defense, he just wants to put up points, he got paid and is content with whatever happens, he has his eyes on the NFL and isn't worried about the future here, etc. None of that is true. He had a bad season, one which I think has blindsided and affected him quite a bit, and he should absolutely be judged on how he responds and adjusts to it, what he does with this DC hire, how the roster looks entering next season, etc. But the 'Fire Lincoln Riley' threads, questioning his character because he lost five games, and everything else of that sort is absurd. You don't do this job, with all it demands, and not care intensely about it. Everything we started this diatribe with -- trying to control the narrative, worrying too much about how things are perceived -- speak directly to that. As to the talk that he 'doesn't know how to' make a good DC hire -- he's only made ONE ever. Talking about sample sizes, that isn't enough to render a verdict upon. I'd much more confidently bet on -- rather than bet against -- a guy who has been successful at every other point of his career until this fall. I'm not saying the runway goes on forever, but it's way too premature to presume what a guy with his resume can't do."

Jeff McCulloch: "I'll keep it shorter since so much has already been covered. I get why they are frustrated. He came in as the savior to rebuild this dead program. I think he actually hurt himself by doing so well in season 1. What he said at the postgame press conference after the UCLA game was correct. If they would have lost 5 games the first season and progressed into a one-loss season, the reaction would have been totally different. But that isn’t reality as this shows signs, whether it’s true or not, of some regression already. Riley isn’t on the hot seat, everyone knows that, but I don’t think his seat is as comfortable as it was two years ago. If he has another bad year in his first season in the Big Ten, he might be on the hot seat."