The USC defensive coordinator search is now in its critical moments. With teams’ regular seasons ending this past Saturday, the Trojans should now be lining up and conducting interviews with candidates. USC has not been able to directly interview any candidate who had been working as a head coach or coordinator during the college football season. That can’t happen until regular seasons come to an end. Remember: USC would not have been able to interview Lincoln Riley directly had Oklahoma beaten Oklahoma State in 2021. Oklahoma would have advanced to the Big 12 Championship Game. OU needed to lose to Oklahoma State and fall short of the Big 12 title game in order for Mike Bohn and Brandon Sosna to close the deal.
Only now can USC interview the candidates it realistically wants. Now this search gets very serious, and USC will need to move quickly since the transfer portal opens on December 4 and the new coordinator needs to be able to make an impact there and on the recruiting trail.
There’s one other area where USC’s new defensive coordinator has to help Lincoln Riley, and it will happen before — not after — that coordinator is hired.
Here it is: When Riley and USC interview candidates, those candidates need to tell Riley and athletic director Jennifer Cohen one thing in particular. No, it’s not that they need full control of the defense (though that does need to be a requirement). The biggest thing the defensive coordinator candidate must tell Riley and Cohen in the interview room is this:
I will not work for Bennie Wylie as strength coach. You need to bring in another guy I am comfortable with. That’s how a defensive coordinator can make a first big contribution to USC: Not just by agreeing to become Riley’s coordinator, but by forcing Riley to change the strength and conditioning coach who has been holding back the program. Watch for that in this process. A smart defensive coordinator candidate will indeed push Riley to make this change, or will at least want to get good answers from Wylie which could pave the way for an altered philosophy in terms of player development and practice methods. Those methods can’t be allowed to stay the same, because those methods produced a very, very soft USC team this past season.
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