Lincoln Riley knows how to go through a college football season with no more than two losses. He pulled off that feat in each of his five seasons at Oklahoma. If he goes through the 2022 season with no more than two losses at USC, the Trojans will have had a very successful year.
Yet, if Riley wants to make the leap from a coach who loses twice in a season to a coach who loses only once — and sometimes zero times — he has to be quicker to recognize when a plan isn’t hitting all of its targets, either in games or on the recruiting trail.
Oklahoma insider Kegan Reneau explained on The Riley Files:
“That’s part of the uproar that Oklahoma fans have had because they blame it on strength and conditioning, which is another conversation that is tied to USC,” Reneau said. “They had some misses, and when you’re on as good of a roll as Oklahoma was with offensive line play, you’re due to have some misses on the recruiting trail and they did. They didn’t fill those holes the way they needed to, in my opinion, but it happens. You’ve gotta recognize that issue, and you’ve gotta be able to adjust. They just went too long with the same mantra and same mindset and the idea that we’re just gonna wake up one day and the Oklahoma offensive line is gonna be back to what it was in 2017 and ’18. That just wasn’t the case.”
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