Lincoln Riley is making sure to evaluate USC defense in preseason camp
Lincoln Riley is the best offensive play-designer and the best quarterback teacher in major college football. It is true that a world-class offensive strategist has to have an understanding for how defenses work, but it remains that Riley is an expert at teaching quarterbacks and receivers how to work fluidly and precisely on a field. Riley has not established a track record as a guru for defensive linemen or linebackers. The offense is where his bread is buttered.
It is an adjustment for a brilliant offensive coach to spend time evaluating his own defense. At many college football programs, an expert on one side of the ball hires a coordinator to manage the opposite side of the ball so that he doesn’t have to worry about that “other half” of the team. It simply isn’t the case with Riley and Alex Grinch at USC. Grinch isn’t that lockdown coordinator who has everything figured out. He isn’t what Brent Venables was for Dabo Swinney at Clemson, or what Kirby Smart was for Nick Saban at Alabama.
Riley has to help Grinch succeed. He knows his tenure at USC depends on getting a not-very-good defense to improve.
Accordingly, Riley is watching the defense more in preseason camp. Dan Weber of 247Sports offered this:
“That includes Lincoln, who according to d-line coach Shaun Nua, is as he promised, much more of a presence at the defensive end of the field this season. ‘He’s always helped out but to have those extra eyes,’ Shaun says, ‘extra eyes from a guy who sees what he sees.’
“What Nua says he personally is ‘doing better is declaring war on mental errors.’”
Riley is helping his defensive assistants provide quality control and accountability. It’s an investment of time which is necessary.
Kliff Kingsbury can spend time working with Caleb Williams and the other quarterbacks. That’s what Riley hired Kliff: to be an extra teacher for the QB room so that Riley can invest more time in evaluating the defense.
It’s all part of the plan this year at USC.
