We can blame Lincoln Riley for a lot of problems at USC football. We can blame him for not firing Alex Grinch before the 2023 season. We can blame him for retaining Donte Williams, a move which clearly backfired. We can blame him for USC’s offensive line not being as good as it could have been or should have been. We can blame him for USC having a soft, weak team in 2023 which got pushed around at the line of scrimmage. We can blame him for bringing Bennie Wylie to Los Angeles instead of hiring a better strength coach. Believe us, we’ve mentioned Lincoln Riley’s flaws and haven’t shied away from doing so. We haven’t treated him with kid gloves. However, all criticism has to be fair. It has to be reasonable. With Justus Terry and Isaiah Gibson, two prime defensive recruits who just decommitted from USC, this is not a failure of Lincoln Riley or Eric Henderson.
Lincoln Riley hired Henderson to sell USC’s new emphasis on NFL-quality player development. That hire — and the sales pitch attached to it — successfully gained a commitment. That was a tangible achievement. The fact that the commitment didn’t hold up — with Terry and Gibson changing their minds — points to factors other than the coaching staff. These decommitments weren’t the product of Eric Henderson suddenly becoming less of an authority on defensive line coaching and player development. These decommitments didn’t occur because D’Anton Lynn somehow became a less impressive defensive coordinator. No, this was almost surely about player compensation and what was put on the table by USC, compared to other schools these players visited.
Coaches can tell players what is available to them. Other people have to follow through and deliver what is available. We need to be able to identify coaching failures and separate them from administrative or structural failures, and be clear in saying as much.
Lincoln Riley was a bad coach at USC in 2023. He learned from his mistakes, but he is still paying a steep price for all the huge mistakes he made last year. That said, this episode is not a coaching failure. We can admit that, and Riley’s harshest critics have to admit that as well.
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