Nebraska might face an even more dangerous USC team with no Heisman quarterback

After Southern California cornerback Prophet Brown returned an interception 102 yards for a touchdown three weeks ago, USC should hope so. The Trojans’ defense in 2023 was so bad — allowing 34.4 points per game — that they only won seven games with the best quarterback in the country, Caleb Williams.

Williams rolled on to the NFL. USC rolled on to the Big Ten, and no one’s quite sure how the transition will go.

Of the four West Coast newcomers, Oregon shouldn’t miss a beat, UCLA may be in for some brunt force pain and Washington has to rebuild after two of its best-ever seasons.

USC? It’s the biggest brand of the new arrivals. Best fight song. Best history of Heisman Trophy success. And it has the most proven head coach of the four in Lincoln Riley.

What USC does not have — and this is rare for both the school and the head coach — is the best quarterback. And maybe that’s a good thing.

It would seem counterintuitive, given USC plays 11 power conference games, with non-league tilts against LSU and Notre Dame. But the Trojans couldn’t stop three overfed house cats in Riley’s first two seasons, allowing 40 or more points eight times.

Thanks to Williams, USC won four of those games.

Still, it’s no formula to win Big Ten titles.

In this league, Riley’s teams have to play defense to win titles. And quarterback Miller Moss’ relative limitations — compared to Williams, Kyler Murray, Baker Mayfield and Jalen Hurts — may well force the Trojans to play better defense.

Moss sparkled in the 2023 Holiday Bowl — tearing up an overrated Louisville team — and headed into USC’s spring game a heavy favorite to start over UNLV transfer Jayden Maiava. Moss then threw two bad interceptions, one of which got returned for the score.

“He’ll probably grade out pretty darn high for the day,” Riley told USC reporters after the game, noting Moss had been “lights out” for much of spring camp. “We don’t want the one bad (interception) but when you play enough snaps it’s going to happen from time to time.”

USC’s defense needs to make that happen more, and defense is where Riley made his biggest offseason moves.

He fired defensive coordinator and friend Alex Grinch, who never quite seemed in sync with Riley’s shootout philosophy. Then he hired UCLA’s DC, D’anton Lynn, to come across town and run the Trojans’ D. Lynn did wonders for the Bruins’ run defense, which ranked among the nation’s best.

In the Spring Game, USC showed a 4-2-5 scheme that looks more like a 2-4-5 because the two ends stand up just inside or outside the tackles. Wisconsin ran this look for years under Jim Leonhard. Unless the offense has a running quarterback — most Big Ten teams don’t — it’s hard to handle. And the Trojans will have more speed than Wisconsin.

Riley also hired Rams’ defensive line coach Eric Henderson — the man who coached Aaron Donald — for the same position, and North Dakota State head coach Matt Entz to coach linebackers. It’s a legit defensive staff that helped USC pick off four passes in a spring game format — gold jerseys for QBs, no tackling — that favored offensive production.

“Average defenses maybe only get two of those and you gotta take advantage of it,” Riley said, “and our guys obviously did a tremendous job with that today.”

Only once in his head coaching career — the 2020 COVID year — did Riley have what you’d call a good defense. That unit, at Oklahoma, allowed 21.7 points per game, and widely led pundits to believe his 2021 squad could win the national title. OU began that year No. 2 in the preseason Associated Press poll and a SEC-juggernaut-in-waiting.

The Sooners won their first nine — with lots of close calls — before down-the-stretch losses to Baylor and Oklahoma State. Hours after the end of Bedlam, Riley took the last train for the coast.

“I know I hurt people there,” Riley said one year later on ESPN’s College GameDay program. “And I live with that. I’ve got to own that … I absolutely did not handle the situation perfectly.”

OU, being OU, got all puffy about it, but the Sooners have posted a 16-10 record in two years under Brent Venables, the guy Bob Stoops didn’t hire in 2017 when he could’ve. No, Stoops hired Riley, who has won 80% of his games and helped three quarterbacks both win the Heisman and become the first overall pick in the NFL Draft.

So let’s be clear: Riley is a top-shelf program leader. Who currently has the nation’s No. 3 recruiting class, according to On3.

Oregon’s Dan Lanning is the current coach du swagu despite never having won — or even played in — a conference title game. So Riley’s visor still has a prominent bill on it.

If he gets a defense. The national title teams play it well. And the great USC teams did, too.

Pete Carroll’s 12-1 2008 squad allowed nine points per game. His ’03 and ’04 national title teams allowed 18.4 and 13 per game. We remember the ’05 team because of Reggie Bush — rightly in possession of his Heisman again — but forget that defense was arguably Carroll’s worst, and it cost USC the crown against Texas. Carroll’s last USC team — quarterbacked by mediocre Matt Barkley — allowed 19.8 points per game. It’s the last Trojan team to allow fewer than 20.

Scoring? Not a problem. USC averaged at least 30 points per game in 11 of the last 14 seasons. Sam Darnold spun it gorgeously back in 2016 and 2017. Williams did in 2022 and 2023. Defense — depth, playmaking and takeaways — has been the issue.

And by the time Nebraska heads to Tinseltown on Nov. 16 for USC’s Homecoming game, the Huskers will know if the Trojans have a defense. USC wants to improve on 15 takeaways in 2023 and a run defense that allowed 4.79 yards per game.

It may rely on as many as five transfers to start, including two transfers from Oregon State and two more from rivals UCLA (Kamari Ramsey and John Humphrey). When Riley took Lynn, he took a lot. That rivalry will be heated.

“It’s a little different,” Ramsey told reporters this spring. He followed Lynn to USC after 40 tackles for the Bruins. “I know I’m used to it now.”

Can Riley get used to a more modest approach with Moss? The Top 100 quarterback in the 2021 class has “mid” athleticism and about the same kind of arm. His delivery starts low and takes a second to complete. He’s a game manager, a distributor, a smart kid who stuck around and now gets his shot in year four.

He might be what Riley needs to slow down his offense and help that defense.

“I really like coaching the team, I like the way they interact with each other, I like the way they compete with each other,” Riley said. “…what happens here in the next eight, nine months will determine if we say it’s positive or not, but it feels different.”

It’s different, alright. USC’s inaugural Big Ten game is at Michigan. First Trojan trip to the Big House since 1958. It’s not Jan. 1 in the Rose Bowl anymore.