USC coach Lincoln Riley had no opening statement Saturday night as he took his seat for the postgame press conference.
Normally, he'd have a message he wanted to project, positives in the face of defensive struggles that he'd want to highlight before the onslaught of questions. Not Saturday night.
Riley went straight to questions, with all but two centering on the No. 20/24 Trojans' abject defensive collapse in a 52-42 loss to No. 5 Washington inside the Coliseum.
USC gave up 572 yards, including 316 rushing yards to a team that came in averaging 102.2 per game (117th in the country) and that hadn't rushed for more than 177 in any game. Huskies junior running back Dillon Johnson hadn't rushed for more than 100 yards in a game in his career but rumbled for 256 yards and 4 touchdowns on 9.8 yards per carry, while quarterback Michael Penix Jr. did the rest, completing 22 of 30 passes for 256 yards, 2 TDs, 1 INT and a rushing TD.
Riley deflected big-picture questions about the defense, making clear he wasn't going to deliver a referendum on the whole season at this point, with two games to play.
"I understand the question, I know it's your all's job to ask it, I'm not into the big picture questions right now," he said. "Like, my job's to go try to beat Oregon next week and to coach what we have here. I know as a head coach it all falls under my responsibility ultimately, and I don't shy away from that -- and I never have -- but there's times and places for those discussions and those will happen at the appropriate times."
But his frustration -- perhaps his exasperation -- came through in a way it hadn't at any point this season.
Watch the postgame press conference here and scroll down for a complete transcript of his comments.
RELATED: Watch interviews with USC players after the loss to Washington
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In the spring you said there was no reason you couldn't have a high-level defense, why do these kind of performances keep happening?
"Yeah, I'm not going to get into generalizing the whole season. I'll talk about tonight. Yeah, we didn't play very well tonight. The biggest thing was the run game, way too many big plays and some of our worst ball was on some of the biggest plays of the game. The third-and-extra-long where we had a chance to sack him and he gets out and makes kind of a crazy play there in the end zone, a couple other key third-down plays where we had chances to get off the field and we didn't and did not make enough plays obviously to get enough stops to win."
Caleb Wiliams threw for 312 yards and scored 4 TDs while having another generational-type season, is there a frustration you haven't been able to capitalize on that?
"Just in the moment. Everybody wants to, again, you want to write the whole story of the whole thing and all that's happened. These are, every week is its own season for us. We were in the moment right now to try go beat a top-5 team here, and we were agonizingly close -- maybe one holding call from getting that done. So, you know, we're just fighting like crazy every week to play as good as we can and not get too wrapped up in all the big-picture stuff right now. There's too much left to play for, and so we're going to go prepare hard, Caleb's going to go prepare hard, all of us and obviously try to get past this one and get on to another big opportunity next week."
Where do you think the team is with its morale right now?
"Right now, just 5-10 minutes after the game, pissed. Pissed that we missed this opportunity. They've continued to swing, they've continued to fight. It's been a tough stretch. I was talking to the crew here yesterday and Chris Fowler made the comment, he looked at everybody's schedules and couldn't believe the nine-game stretch that we have right now. He said nobody else in the country has anything like it, and he's right. I mean, the way it's played out and the league's really strong and how it's all fell, yeah, it's been a tough stretch, it's a tough stretch of games. But as a coach, when you go through tough stretches, I'm lucky I haven't been through too many, but you look for things. You look for, is the fight there in the team, and the fight is certainly there in this football team. We've seen that over the last few weeks.
"Coming into this game, we had four games in a row we had been down double-digit points at some point and we came back and gave ourselves a chance to win every one of them -- and got two of them and agonizingly close to a third. The fight and all that, again, it's what's given us a chance.
"I think our guys are frustrated that we've been so, so close, and we haven't played good enough to be able to separate. We've had obviously errors in the last few weeks that have cost us. We've had a couple of bad breaks that felt like we got more of the good ones last year and it feels like a few more of the bad ones or a few more of them have just went against us. And that's the nature of it when they're close, man. It comes down to just so many little things, and so yeah, agonizingly close. Certainly not defeated -- it's a good group in there, a lot of character in that room, a lot of character on this staff, a lot of people that love being at USC and love fighting for this team and this program and our fans, and we're going to continue to do so."
They haven't had huge rushing games -- how do you process what they did on the ground tonight?
"Yeah, I've got to watch it, but it obviously wasn't good enough -- I mean, not by any stretch of the imagination. A couple of big plays in the run game certainly at inopportune times. Obviously not giving up that amount of yards, but you have a little bit like I think teams do either with really good offenses or really good defenses of, you know, how are you going to play? We played to try to limit some of the downfield stuff for them in the throw game, which we did a pretty decent job of. But we knew we had to be able to hold up in the run game to be able to do it, and we certainly just did not play nearly well enough."
You gave up 17 explosive plays tonight -- do those start to snowball?
"I mean, it's a good offense. It's a really good offense, and you know you're going to have to make some of your plays. They're going to make plays. They make plays against just about everybody -- you've got to make yours. We had a couple, obviously the pick and a couple of stops, but not enough, not as many as we should have. To me, the third-and-extra-long scramble touchdown was just a, I mean that, the holding penalty at the end, I know my guys up top weren't real fired up about the call -- we'll obviously get a look at it. That was obviously a monumental play, I mean that was probably the game. And obviously the sequence there before half with the fumble and them scoring. That's the game. Other than that, it's too good teams trading jabs, trading blows, man, and that's what it came down to. Unfortunately, it didn't fall in our favor."
Do you regret how you handled the defense this year?
"Again, I'm not, I understand the question, I know it's your all's job to ask it, I'm not into the big picture questions right now. Like, my job's to go try to beat Oregon next week and to coach what we have here. I know as a head coach it all falls under my responsibility ultimately, and I don't shy away from that -- and I never have -- but there's times and places for those discussions and those will happen at the appropriate times."
You've had positives each week to rally around, the fourth quarter last week at Cal, how do you find confidence in the defense for next week how do you get the team galvanized around it?
"You go play. It's like I told the guys, you don't sign up at the beginning of the year and put all this work in and all this sacrifice we do, saying, 'All right, only if everything goes great are we going to stick with it.' You're a phony if you do that, and that's not what this program's about, that's not what we're building, it will never be about that. And I don't think we have anybody in that locker room that feels that way. We battled our ass off, and again, probably kind of like sitting in here we're probably like one of about 20 different plays going different from we're in here saying we got a win over a top-5 team. It's one deal, so we've got to go fight to make those here in the next two weeks. We get to play two opponents that are also like us, near the top of the standings here, and we still have a great opportunity if we can go win these two games, we still have a great opportunity and that's what our focus is going to be."
Why did you choose to run the ball down 10 with limited time left in the fourth quarter?
"I hadn't seen the stats, probably the fact we were averaging close to, I don't know, 10 yards a carry. That would be it."
What changes do you make defensively to try to make progress?
"I think you evaluate everything that you're doing, you evaluate the positions you're putting the guys in, you evaluate every -- you evaluate the calls. And it goes back to, is the problem the call, is it the player, is it the execution of the call, like what is it? And you keep grinding to fix it because every week's new, every week's new matchups, it's a new game. It's like every week is its own season, so you're going to go put together the best plan you can with the guys that we have and you're going to battle like hell and try to get a tough road win next week."
Does that have a debilitating impact on players to have this happen week after week after week?
"You just play the game, you just play the game. I would say, I don't believe so. I think the reality is this team has all shared plenty in the wins and in the losses. It's a team game, and the game flows based on how well that you can play together. And so, no."
What held out MarShawn Lloyd and how did you feel about the run game in his absence?
"Yeah, it was an injury from the Cal game. We kind of found out mid week that he wasn't going to be available. I thought the guys stepped in and played well. I thought the O-line did some really good things against a very talented front. Obviously, Austin had a productive game, Darwin came in there, Raleek came in there, guys did a nice job filling in for MarShawn."
