If USC needed any further sign that its wayward Pac-12 debut was off the tracks with no hope for recovery Saturday night, it came late in the third quarter when that ever reliable Kedon Slovis-Drake London connection faltered once more.
After the duo had uncharacteristically misfired on a touchdown pass that was there to be had late in the second quarter, the normally sure-handed star junior receiver later had a pass thrown just a little behind him deflect off his hands and turn into a 31-yard interception return for touchdown for Stanford’s Kyu Blu Kelly.
At that point, it was a 15-point Cardinal lead with just over 5 minutes left to play in that third quarter, but the boos had started much earlier in the night on the way to an eventual 42-28 Stanford win.
The question now is whether the Trojans’ season has careened too far off the tracks to be righted.
That’s not to say USC won’t win games or play better than this — it’s to wonder if all that preseason confidence within the program can be revived, or what effect comes from the crescendo of frustration within a fan base that already seemed to lose any remaining patience with head coach Clay Helton long ago.
Is it Week 2 of a 12-game schedule or the beginning of what will be a long season for the Trojans in the more figurative sense?
Helton’s message, meanwhile, was a familiar one — give it more time.
“Let’s see at the end of the year. Let’s see — it’s Game 2. It’s Game 2. I have total faith in this staff, I have total faith in the men that are in there, players, coaches. We didn’t play our best tonight, but I know this, at the end of the season see where we’re at. See where we’re at,” he said. “I hope that we look up at the end of the year and you’re asking the question, ‘Man, this team really improved from that Game 2.'”
It would be hard not to improve from what happened Saturday night.
The No. 14-ranked Trojans came in as 17-point favorites in the game and were trailing 42-13 late in the fourth quarter. They were flagged for 9 penalties for 111 yards, some just utterly back-breaking. While the Trojans struggled to find the end zone, they helped Stanford get there with an offsides call after a third-down stand that had initially forced a field goal — with the extra 4 yards, the Cardinal took the field goal off the board and scored a touchdown instead in the second quarter.
Overall, USC struggled in the same ways as it did in Week 1 — failing to capitalize in the red zone — and yet also in so many other ways. A secondary that was air tight in the opener became the Trojans’ undoing Saturday night. While USC couldn’t muster many explosive plays, Stanford impressively schemed its way to the kind that swing games.
And lastly, remember, this Cardinal team had just lost 24-7 in its first game to Kansas State a week ago while rushing for just 39 yards. Against USC, it ran for 141 on 4.7 yards a carry, and had a first-time starting quarterback in Tanner McKee go on the road in the Coliseum and complete 16 of 23 passes for 234 yards, 2 touchdowns and 0 interceptions.
It was a full bingo card of all the reasons fans have lost faith in Helton — many long ago. It’s the consistently undisciplined play, the lack of solutions to problems, too often coming out flat in games against teams they’re expected to beat, simply being outschemed and outcoached … and afterward pledging yet again to get it corrected and to wait and judge his team later in the season.
The Helton Era is running out of laters.
“It’s early in the season — we lost our first conference game. I look forward to seeing the production of our team through an entire season and looking forward to seeing where we add up at the end of a season,” he said, when asked about the boos in the Coliseum and what he would tell fans about the trajectory of his program. “Obviously, this is a step back from last week’s performance, but something that I know our kids will react from and I hope our fans — and I know they will. They’ll support our players. Our fans love this university and they love these players, and we’ll do our job.
“We’ll come back out and continue to get wins and add them up and we’ll see where we are at the end of the season. I know it will be a successful season at the end. Like I told them in the locker room, you never want this to happen ever, but when it’s an early one in the season you can live through it but you’ve got to correct it extremely fast.”
Can they? Live through it or get it corrected?
Helton kept his eyes forward as he walked into the tunnel and off the field Saturday night, fans yelling at him from both sides. The Trojans have been here before. Heck, it’s now been almost three full years since fans paid for a plane to fire a banner above the Coliseum asking for the former athletic director to replace the head coach. At least the Trojans go on the road next weekend to Washington State and can maybe create some fresh momentum away from the groans of the fan base.
“I really don’t try to pay attention to too much of the outside noise, but we hear it and I tell the team everyday ‘Let it motivate us.’ I feel like we’re one of the most hated teams in college football,” junior cornerback Chis Steele said. “Me personally, I’ve always played the villain role, and I don’t have no problem with it. If that’s how it’s going to be with this team we just have to embrace that stuff and just come back every week and show people why [we’re] the business. Simple as that.”
Said quarterback Kedon Slovis: “You hear it. You have to deal with it and play. It’s college football, it’s a serious business, it’s something that kind of comes with expectations at USC and it’s no surprise to all these guys.”
Perhaps it was a bad omen when kicker Parker Lewis was ejected from the game on the opening kickoff for a targeting penalty on the tackle.
On Stanford’s second possession, Nathaniel Peat broke through a well-blocked hole on the left side of the line and took off for an 87-yard touchdown run — more than double the Cardinal’s collective rushing total from its season opener.
That in itself wasn’t an indictment, rather a well-designed and executed play, and things hadn’t unraveled yet for the Trojans.
USC’s sluggish offense would answer early in the second quarter when it capped a 15-play, 95-yard drive with center Brett Neilon making a heady play to get off the ground after his initial block and push running back Keaontay Ingram into the end zone to make it a 7-7 game.
But the Trojans would struggle trying to find the end zone again.
Meanwhile, a USC secondary that had played exceptionally a week ago vs. San Jose State was picked apart until it came undone Saturday.
On that next drive after USC’s touchdown, Brycen Tremayne beat cornerback Isaac Taylor-Stuart for a 25-yard reception as the corner never turned around to play the ball — a theme of his struggles in past years. On the very next play, during which freshman safety Calen Bullock delivered an impressive pass breakup, Steele was flagged for a 15-yard unnecessary roughness penalty after the play (it was a very questionable call), Taylor-Stuart was called for pass interference in the end zone on third down three plays later (more blatant), and after the defense rebounded to stuff Stanford on the ground three straight plays and force a field goal cornerback Josh Jackson Jr. was called offside on the kick.
The Cardinal opted to take the points off the board and scored on a 3-yard touchdown pass from McKee to Elijah Higgins.
The frustration would only mount.
Helton was asked why he thinks his teams continue to be so heavily penalized year after year. He redirected his answer to a game against a Mountain West team last week in which the numbers were better.
“I think we had four last week. I think we won the penalty battle last week, we lost it today — let’s see how it goes through the entirety of the season,” he said. “I’m not going to agree with every call tonight — I didn’t. But tonight the penalties were not on our side, but I hope we look more like Game 1 [next] week, which I thought was an extremely clean game. I hope we get back to that in a hurry.”
After driving to the Stanford 7 late in the second quarter, Slovis was just a touch off on that third-down pass to London in the back center of the end zone, but the ball looked to go off part of the receiver’s hand. The Trojans settled for a field goal to cut the deficit to 14-10.
Stanford quickly piled on further, though. Running back Austin Jones froze linebacker Kana’i Mauga with a juke move and ran wide open for a 49-yard completion. (Again, a savvy play design to isolate Mauga in pass coverage, which is not his strength). Two plays later McKee hit Tremayne for a 6-yard touchdown and a 21-10 lead.
USC started the third quarter with a long drive to the Stanford 16, but Gary Bryant Jr. couldn’t reel in a Slovis third-down pass in the end zone and went careening head first into the goal post. Yeah, it was that kind of night.
Fortunately, Bryant said after the game he was fine, but the second half would be painful for the Trojans nonetheless.
USC kicked a field goal to make it 21-13 and then forced a Stanford punt, but on that next series came that fateful pick-6 off London’s hands as the Cardinal made it a 28-13 lead that seemed almost insurmountable given the way the night was unfolding.
“We’ve got to play better. I think the turnover right there was tough. The slant was open, if we hit that one it’s different, but a pick-6 puts us in a hole,” offensive coordinator Graham Harrell said. “Like I said, we’ve got to play better to win games. I think they played better than we did tonight. More than anything, they played harder early. That’s never going to be acceptable.”
USC punted, Stanford benefited from pass interference calls on Greg Johnson (who lost his balance and grabbed the receiver) and Steele on back-to-back plays and capped a 56-yard touchdown drive with a 1-yard McKee keeper.
It was 35-13, and while it was still the third quarter, it was over.
Many fans started flooding out of the Coliseum around that time, while some chose to stay and boo.
Stanford tacked on another touchdown — a 2-yard Isaiah Sanders run — before USC found the end zone twice in the final 6 minutes with the game well in hand, on an 11-yard Slovis touchdown to London and 4-yard Darwin Barlow touchdown run.
It’s only two games into the season, but a large chunk of the fan base was also concerned after USC went into the fourth quarter last week leading by just 6 over San Jose State before closing out a 30-7 win.
Helton could at least point to the strong fourth quarter and final score then.
This time, there’s not much more to say — only questions about where USC’s season goes from here.
“When you look at it across the board, they beat us in every phase,” Helton admitted. “Like we said in there, in each and every phase, if you look at the execution they out-executed us and when you look up we did not do what we did in the first game. We got beat in penalties, we got beat in third down efficiency and we get beat in the turnovers — we didn’t get turnovers. It’s something that our team, I could tell in that locker room how bad that hurt them.”
As Helton, Harrell and players were asked what went so wrong and what needs to change, they kept saying “execution.” The word was used more than a dozen times by the Trojans after the loss.
“For the defense at least, I think we just have to execute better,” safety Isaiah Pola-Mao said.
Said Harrell: “They just executed better than we did tonight. We had some opportunities down there, didn’t execute well enough to win.”
Said Slovis: “We just have to finish. There wasn’t anything we didn’t see on film. I thought we were pretty well prepared. I thought we had good moments. Again, we just have to be more consistent and execute.”
And Bryant: “Everybody’s fired up. We know what we’ve got to do. It’s not like we just went out there and [didn’t] know what we didn’t do. We just didn’t execute and finish our plays. If we do that, we’ll be great.”
The lack of execution is the outcome, but the Trojans have to figure out the how and why and what to do to make it different. Those aren’t answers they have to give publicly, but they need to find them quickly or else this season could go off the rails as quickly as that game did Saturday night.
Steele, meanwhile, was the most candid of all after the game. He said the Trojans didn’t have their best week of practice “and it showed in the game and was real evident.” More to the point, though, even if they fix it on the practice field it has to carry over to Saturday, he said.
“Everybody needs to find out what motivates them. We come out with a lot of energy throughout the week and then once we get closer to game time it’s like a shift of energy. We’ve got to stay consistent with the people that we are. If we’re going to be this big ooh-rah team, we’ve got to play like that every single week. We can’t have low energy on the sideline when we have the most energy in practice. It shouldn’t work like that. It’s supposed to be vice versa,” he said.
“… At the end of the day, we all grown men. We all got a job that we gotta fulfill and if you’re not going to do it, somebody else is going to step up and do it for you.”
Indeed, that’s the kind of accountability USC’s frustrated fan base is looking for from top to bottom.