USC football blasted by anonymous Pac-12 coaches

The 2023 season for USC football was a major disappointment. It’s no secret. The fans know it, the players know it and Lincoln Riley knows it. The Trojans have to be better, especially with the talent that they had on this year’s roster. USC was loaded on offense, but the defense was the big issue, and the Trojans ended up finishing 7-5 because of it.

USC football came into this season knowing that their defense was holding them back from championships, and yet it got worse. Lincoln Riley knows that a season like this can’t happen again.

“I wouldn’t sit there and say any part of it was good enough,”  Riley said in November, according to an article from The Athletic. “I don’t have any excuses. I don’t think you leave a season like this feeling any piece of it was good enough.”

The Athletic recently interviewed numerous coaches from around the Pac-12, and those coaches blasted USC. The coaches were kept anonymous.

“Something’s really off there, though. I don’t get it,” A head coach said. “It’s like he’s gotta start over now there.”

That’s not what USC fans want to hear. Things could get better soon, but after hearing how other coaches view the program, that doesn’t seem like an easy task. A lot of the comments were focused on the defense.

“It was like a bunch of mercenaries, just trying to get their own stats,” One Pac-12 head coach said. “They were all over the place. You’d toss it outside, and you’d see their guys going all over the place, so undisciplined. It was unbelievable. You had no idea what they were trying to get done.”

There were a lot of other comments in the article, and there weren’t many positives. It’s clear that this program has a lot of work to do this offseason.

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