We saw on Wednesday night in the Holiday Bowl how important it was for Alex Grinch and Donte Williams to leave USC.
Luca Evans of the Southern California News Group pointed out before the Holiday Bowl that nearly one-third of USC’s roster was unavailable for this game against Louisville. Evans counted 20 of the 60 players listed on the 2023 depth chart as being unavailable for this game. That’s a lot of players. That’s a lot of depth to lose.
USC was thin. USC did not have a lot of options in this game. Miller Moss was the quarterback, and no one else, with Caleb Williams opting out and Malachi Nelson in the portal. Domani Jackson, Tackett Curtis, and lots of other notable names weren’t available on defense. This did not set up well for USC, at least not on paper. Louisville won 10 games this season and had a defense with a good statistical profile. Louisville’s offensive line pounded a Notre Dame defensive line which gave USC all sorts of problems.
We didn’t expect USC to win to begin with. After all the opt-outs and transfers, USC’s odds seemed to be even lower. After Louisville got off to a quick start, it seemed that the worst was about to happen.
Then everything changed.
USC showed resilience and toughness. We saw things from this group that we hadn’t seen since the blowout of Stanford on September 9. This was a completely new Trojan team. Where has this team been?
The answer: addition by subtraction brought forth this effort. We will explain in the tweets below: