Tag: Clay Helton

We will not do our USC report card for this week, because the Trojans’ 2023 season is now a failure. An F.

Whatever grades one might assign to different players is fundamentally irrelevant now that the season is a disaster. USC technically could still mount a rally in the next month, but not one soul thinks this team will beat both Washington and Oregon and make it to Las Vegas for the Pac-12 Championship. That stamps the season as a total failure.

USC will play in the Las Vegas or Sun Bowl. That’s Lane Kiffin 2012 territory.

All of this brings up a key, central point about Lincoln Riley: We can take issue with the things he says to the media, and we can nitpick the tone or inflection or point of emphasis he brings to the table. However, those things don’t matter if the team is winning games and playing well.

Because the team is losing and playing poorly, the press conference remarks become more glaring and annoying.

Let’s go through these remarks and paint the fuller picture of a program that is in trouble and needs major changes:

USC is recruiting really well right now. To be sure, USC is recruiting at a higher level than what we saw during the Clay Helton years. Trojan fans might be tempted to say that Lincoln Riley is showing everyone what real recruiting looks like. To a certain extent, that might be true.

Yet, if we’re focused on the big picture — competing for national championships and restoring the Pete Carroll (John McKay, 1970s John Robinson) standard — recruiting isn’t the whole story.

USC football analyst Josh Webb offered these comments about USC recruiting and overall football success:

“USC has recruited at this level before,” Webb began. “Fans might recall the infamous 2014 class that was the best class ever recruited at one point. The class featured Adoree’ Jackson, JuJu Smith-Schuster, Bryce Dixon, Toa Lobendahn, Viane Talamaivao, and Damien Mama. This was expected to be the class that got USC back on track, a base class from which they could recruit around and build. Of those players, only Adoree’ Jackson and JuJu Smith-Schuster turned out to be worth anything. 

“The next year featured another hyped class. This one saw Iman Marshall, Rasheem Green, Chuma Edoga, Osa Masina, Porter Gustin, and Ronald Jones II. Of those players, only Rasheem Green and Ronald Jones II have gone on to have especially productive careers.

“I could list the 2016 class blue chips by name, but the end result was the same. A bunch of highly-touted prospects signed with USC and ultimately went on to irrelevance. That was the huge problem during the Clay Helton era, and it became really apparent at the end of his run. Why mention Helton now? Because he left Riley with absolutely nothing. He truly left Riley less than the Grinch left Whoville.”

(Was that an intentional indirect reference to Alex Grinch? You decide.)

There were highly-touted prospects, as Webb notes. They just didn’t amount to anything. What are we getting at here? While Helton’s recruiting was far from flawless — no one would say he was an ace recruiter — he did have his moments.

Player development was a far, far worse problem for Helton than his recruiting, if we are to compare the two.

College football has seen more than a few examples of coaches who could recruit reasonably if not extremely well, but who couldn’t coach their way out of a wet paper bag. Ron Zook, the successor to Steve Spurrier at Florida, comes to mind in this discussion. He brought in their players, but he couldn’t develop them.

It’s not just about buying good groceries; someone needs to know how to prepare them.

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We know that Lincoln Riley is an elite football coach, and that Clay Helton is not. We know that USC’s current coach understands the game at a molecular, granular level, and that Helton didn’t grasp a lot of basic components of the craft. We know that USC is a nationally relevant program under Riley in ways it very rarely was under Helton. Only the singular brilliance of Sam Darnold gave USC a brief period of prominence in the Helton era, but without Sam, Helton floundered.

Riley has restored USC and has the program poised to achieve bigger things in the coming years. Helton — who will face USC and Riley in 2025 — is now at Georgia Southern, removed from the cutthroat world of Power Five football.

We know the gap in quality is significant, but what is a more specific and detailed way of getting at the difference between the two coaches?

USC football analyst Josh Webb really seemed to get to the heart of the matter, at least in terms of showing how they treated the running game and offensive play calling:

“The idea for Riley is that opposing defenses do not have enough men to account for all of the talent on the field,” Webb explained. “If they want to double up and take away Dorian Singer or any elite receiver, that’s fine. Riley can use the talent discrepancy to exploit many weaknesses. It’s really not fair to ask a defense to account for all of those players, but that’s the job and they’re going to have to try.

“If Riley’s offense is working as it should and the run game is complementary to the passing game rather than secondary, as it had been during the Helton administration, then USC should see massive returns.”

The running game being complementary, not secondary, is a great way of showing how Lincoln Riley understands football at a higher level.

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