You heard it all through the offseason. You heard it as soon as Lincoln Riley was hired late last November: This is going to be Pete Carroll 2.0 at USC.
Game 1 of the Lincoln Riley era provided a lot of highlights, a lot of fun, and a belief that even if the 2022 team (with its flaws and limitations) doesn’t reach a great height, the good times are coming to Los Angeles. This program might suffer some losses and frustrations this year, and it might fall short of most of its primary goals, but as soon as more defensive depth and toughness enter the program, it’s going to be very hard to handle USC.
The offense is already tough to deal with. Sure, there were three pick-sixes in the mix, but even without them, this group scored piles of points relatively quickly before taking its feet off the gas midway through the second half, long before this game ended.
This fact from Saturday’s game shows why everything you’re seeing with Lincoln Riley could match Pete Carroll.
With that touchdown, USC's 66 points are the most scored by USC in a single game since 2008 (think Pete Carroll and Mark Sanchez)
— Adam Grosbard (@AdamGrosbard) September 4, 2022
One blowout of Rice really doesn’t prove much, but the fact that you didn’t see USC score 66 points against tomato-can teams under Clay Helton offers a very real illustration that this is already a different time with a different vibe at USC.
Will Riley exceed Carroll? Maybe … but let’s not get too greedy right off the bat. Let’s start simply: Matching Carroll would be pretty darn great.
We can already see the potential for USC to do that.
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