The Lincoln Riley experiment at USC looked like a home run hire at the time, especially with how things turned around in 2022, his first year, with the Trojans narrowly missing a spot in the College Football Playoff. However, last season was when many fans and administrators may have started to realize that a 22-man unit under Riley comes with the defense optional package.
The USC defense provided about as much resistance as a wet paper bag in rain, and as a result, the Trojans had a bit of a disastrous season for their standards, finishing with an 8-5 record, but one in which they lost five of their last six regular season games. And that was with a Heisman winner at quarterback.
Now, Riley has to not only find a way to improve his program’s defense on the fly, but he has to do it will entering into a new conference that prides itself on playing a physical brand of football that has had some of the best defenses in the country over the last couple of years.
Count SEC mouthpiece Paul Finebaum as one who is not convinced that Riley will be able to figure it all out. He believes he would have struggled in the Pac-12 and will have an even harder time getting the ship turned back out into open water in the Big Ten. When asked to pontificate on how much Riley has to prove moving forward while covering SEC media days, Finebaum was about as non-apologetic and critical as one could be.
“I think he has an enormous amount to prove, because quite frankly, I think he’s been a disaster,” Finebaum said. “He ran away. He did not want to deal with the Southeastern Conference at OU. He took what he saw was an easier course, so he goes out to Southern Cal. He takes Caleb Williams. Good first year, but since then everything has gone wrong. I thought last year was one of the worst coaching jobs I’ve ever seen.
“Quite frankly, had I been the Athletics Director at Southern Cal, I would’ve fired Lincoln Riley because he’s yet to show, after many years as a head coach, that he knows anything about defense,” Finebaum said. “He’s gone through defensive coordinators. He just simply couldn’t handle it. And now things are going to be five times worse in the Big Ten.”
To complicate matters for Riley, Finebaum believes things could have been an easier pill to swallow had other Pac-12 powers not come into the Big Ten after UCLA and USC first agreed to make the move.
“With Oregon and Washington going to the Big Ten, that’s the worst thing that could’ve happened to Lincoln Riley,” continued Finebaum. … “He’s not going to the playoffs and he’s not going to survive Southern California. The Big Ten is going to eat him up.”
.@finebaum says Lincoln Riley has been a "disaster" at USC 😳
— First Take (@FirstTake) July 15, 2024
"I thought last year was one of the worst coaching jobs I've ever seen. Quite frankly ... I would've fired Lincoln Riley." pic.twitter.com/1rW4LXP23V
Riley may prove everyone wrong, but there’s not two ways about it – the Big Ten is a stronger conference than the Pac-12 was, and is even stronger than it was itself with the addition of the four teams from the West Coast.