USC defense predictably shows weaknesses, but a case for optimism exists
The 2023 USC football spring game was eagerly anticipated, given the rise of the program over the past 15 months under Lincoln Riley. USC is back to the place where it fundamentally belongs: entering a season with very high expectations and the potential to be great. Obviously, USC carried significant flaws heading into this spring game. Crucially, we never said or implied that the Trojans’ weaknesses would be fixed in short order.
This defense was always going to need time to come together and learn what it needs to learn. No one should have gone into this spring game thinking USC could quickly turn the corner. Accordingly, we shouldn’t overreact to anything which happened in this game, good or bad.
That said: USC’s defense certainly had a rough ride. It’s not that the offense was so good; it wasn’t. Yet, in a few crucial components of competition, we saw the same problems and the familiar deficits which emerged so brutally in the latter half of the 2022 season.
There were plenty of missed tackles in the open field. Yes, MarShawn Lloyd looks like the real deal, but while it’s great that Lloyd looked shifty and elusive, USC’s linebackers and secondary didn’t wrap up the way Alex Grinch would have hoped.
Ceyair Wright struggled in pass coverage. Keep in mind that Caleb Williams played three snaps on the first drive of the game and then sat out so that the other quarterbacks could all get meaningful reps.
To a certain extent, the defense got stops because of the offense’s sloppiness, not so much because the defense smothered the offense and forced mistakes. Many of the offense’s mistakes were self-created.
It’s true that Jacobe Covington and Christian Pierce made good plays on balls thrown into traffic, and that Sam Greene showed something on the pass rush along with Anthony Lucas and Jamil Muhammad. If there is something encouraging to take from the defense’s performance, it’s that a lot of different players made noteworthy plays. The collective performance was shaky, but again, that shouldn’t rate as a surprise.
Notably, though, Alex Grinch has a lot to work with on film. Spring games are supposed to elicit mistakes from less-than-fully-proven players so that they can be coached up in the summer.
Nevertheless: USC’s defense has a long way to go. This won’t be a quick fix. Saturday’s game affirmed that reality.
