USC football’s 34-32 loss to Illinois on Saturday was a brutal one. The Trojans played terrible defense, turned the ball over multiple times, committed too many penalties, and had poor clock management, ultimately leading to them falling to a less talented opponent.
Naturally, there has been a lot of frustration among USC fans and media over the past few days. In an episode of his “Tunnel Vision” USC football show following Saturday’s game, longtime USC reporter Ryan Abraham of 247Sports went off on the Trojans for their performance in Champaign.
“Inexcusable loss for USC,” Abraham said. “This was not a game that the Trojans should have lost.
“Were there things going against USC? . . . Yes. Adversity happens, especially on the road. [But] this is still the same [Illinois] team that got absolutely pummeled by Indiana the week before.
“You don’t need excuses. You gotta go win games. All we heard about in the offseason was how much things were improved . . . but you can’t have eight, nine, ten penalties a game . . . USC’s one the worst penalized teams in the country for penalties, number of penalties, and yards. You can’t go on the road and do that.
“If you looked good, and you weren’t sloppy, but your guys were just getting beat, one-on-on and things like that, fine. But they didn’t look buttoned-down. And that’s what they needed to be for this game.”
Abraham makes some good points. Saturday was far less an instance of USC losing to a better opponent as it was the Trojans beating themselves with numerous costly errors. That is something that we have seen far too often from this program under head coach Lincoln Riley, and something that USC will need to fix if they want to have any shot at becoming contenders in the Big Ten and/or College Football Playoff landscapes.
This article originally appeared on Trojans Wire: Longtime USC football reporter rips Trojans for their performance in loss to Illinois
Reporting by Adam Bradford, Trojans Wire / Trojans Wire
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
