Jon Wilner of The Wilner Hotline thinks USC will lose to Oregon State in Week 4 of the coming season. He picked the Trojans to go 9-3 this season. We will obviously learn a lot more about the Men of Troy in the coming weeks. They first have to deal with Stanford, then Fresno State, before tackling that huge challenge in Corvallis on Sept. 24.
Wilner had plenty to say about everything which happened in the Pac-12 over the weekend — of course he did. That’s his job.
He included a few thoughts about the Trojans, who did not get top billing in the conference due to the fact that Utah played a showcase game at Florida, and Oregon played a spotlight game against Georgia in Atlanta. While the Utes and Ducks badly hurt their College Football Playoff chances, USC took care of business against Rice after a shaky first quarter on defense.
Debut of the week: USC coach Lincoln Riley
The anticipation built steadily over the course of 279 days. And when the new era of USC football finally began, it looked … pretty damn good.
The Trojans resembled Riley’s former team, Oklahoma, in a 66-14 victory over Rice that included three touchdowns by the defense (via Pick Sixes), two scores by transfer receiver Jordan Addison and highly-efficient play from star quarterback Caleb Williams.
That said, Rice is a third-tier FBS program. We’ll have a better sense for USC’s progress on Saturday when it visits Stanford. The Cardinal has won five of the past eight meetings and steamrollered the Trojans in Week Two last season. Two days later, Clay Helton was canned.
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