UCLA football has had a lot of gridiron headaches lately, but USC has its problems too. College Sports Wire highlighted USC’s woes after the stumbling Trojans ate a 34-32 loss to the Illinois Fighting Illini on Saturday.
The Trojans were undefeated after they beat the Purdue Boilermakers the week prior, but then they faced one of the top Big Ten teams in Illinois. Trojans Wire highlighted USC’s struggles with poor defense, clock management, penalties and turnovers as being a routine problem for the Trojans’ Big Ten losses. College Sports Wire added more:
“That really is the issue — it’s not one loss, but that bad losses to Big Ten teams keep happening as a result of unforced errors,” College Sports Wire wrote. “Lincoln Riley just can’t fix problems. He is a bad football coach right now.”
Riley has a 30-15 record in his tenure with the Trojans. Although they’ve won games against Boilermakers and the Michigan State Spartans this year, it hasn’t been pretty. In both those games, USC had more penalties. They had nine penalties for 103-yards against Purdue and 11 penalties for 82 yards against the Spartans.
With no surprise, the team with the most penalties in their latest matchup was USC with eight penalties for 69-yards. They had a chance to beat the Fighting Illini, but mistakes and undiscipline play once again cost them a chance at getting a Big Ten win.
When a team has consistent flaws that continue to show up without any course correcting, then that’s a trend. In fact, these problems should sound familiar to Bruins fans because they are some of the same reasons that cost DeShaun Foster his job with UCLA.
Granted there was a lot more problems going on with the Bruins than Riley’s Trojans, but if errors keep showing up then something needs to change. This begs the question: Could Riley blunder his way out of a job by the end of the year?
This article originally appeared on UCLA Wire: College Sports Wire highlights USC’s continuing woes
Reporting by Ryan Lorenz, UCLA Wire / UCLA Wire
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
