Lincoln Riley has failed to this point in his USC football tenure. There are many different ways of explaining what everyone can see: Riley's teams have soft defenses. They keep making mistakes. Accountability is missing. Below the surface, however, what might be a deeper structural reason for Riley's failures? Perhaps this question gets to the heart of the matter: What is it about USC that Riley lacked at Oklahoma, where he failed to win a College Football Playoff game but achieved just about everything else?
Here's a good answer:
USC reflects a broken Lincoln Riley culture. Lincoln Riley has never taken defense seriously, and now that he's not at Oklahoma in a weak Big 12 where Texas is not good (that was the situation he had in 2017, when the Longhorns
were stumbling), he is running into a brick wall in the Big Ten. Lincoln Riley came to college football as a gifted offensive coordinator who could win games 59-52. In his prime years as the head coach at Oklahoma, he could still win that way. No Big 12 defense was good enough to stand up to him. Now, in the Big Ten (and this was true in the Pac-12 with Utah and Oregon), Riley can't win 59-52 games anymore. They don't exist. The defenses are better. So, Riley has his shootout-centric style of play in a conference which won't allow for it. Riley doesn't demand elite toughness or physicality on defense. Gary Patterson is being asked to work within a broken model. That's what is truly going on here. The head coach has to insist on defense. Riley does not. It really is that simple.
The Big Ten is not the 2017-era Big 12. Start there when considering why Lincoln Riley's career has gone steadily downward at USC.
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This article originally appeared on Trojans Wire: Why Lincoln Riley has failed to match his Oklahoma standard at USC
