We can admit that USC isn’t a complete team in the way the 2005 USC Trojans were a complete team. A truly complete team — at its highest level and in its fullest, most potent manifestation — blows teams away on a regular basis. If it stumbles for 30 minutes, it dominates for the next 30. If it suffers some bad breaks, it roars back and makes people completely forget how bad the game was.
The 2022 USC Trojans aren’t at that level. Their win over Oregon State was shaky. Their victory over Arizona State was marked by a slow start. There wasn’t the easy, airtight, completely confident expectation that everything would get solved.
Part of this is simply because Lincoln Riley is building something, and we know that better USC teams are likely to emerge in the future.
The automatic assurance that everything will be fine in the end isn’t there. It was with the 2005 team, partly because we saw 2004 and how reliable that team also was.
Yet, even though 2022 isn’t a complete team the way the 2005 team was, guess what? The 2022 Trojans are 6-0. Commentators who think this team is ready to lose keep getting disappointed. Let’s go through some of the many highlights of a team which is Trojan tough.