LOS ANGELES – There is still a margin of error for USC. It’s not pretty, and certainly not what those who drew up the grand design for Trojans football had in mind, but it beats the alternative.
The Trojans need one victory in their last two games to become bowl-eligible. This, after winning a close one for a change, a 28-20 Big Ten triumph over Nebraska that wasn’t decided until Greedy Vance intercepted a pass in the end zone in the final five seconds, one that otherwise would have set up the Cornhuskers (5-5, 2-5 in the Big Ten) to at least force overtime with the extra point and possibly win it in regulation if they were daring enough to try a two-point conversion.
This is the type of season that it’s been for USC (5-5, 3-5): Saturday was the seventh of their 10 games decided by eight points or less. They won the first one, against LSU on a neutral field in Las Vegas, but had dropped the next five. And it’s nearly a guarantee that Trojan fans – who had reason to be as fatalistic as Dodger fans were before this most recent postseason – were fearing the worst as Nebraska marched down the field in the final 2:45.
This is not the way it’s supposed to work for this program, with its history of conference and national championships, All-Americans, first-round NFL draft picks and the like.
This is a program that Saturday, for its homecoming game, celebrated the life of the late John Robinson, who was a part of three of those 11 national championships, two as an assistant and one as head coach in 1978. (And, to be honest, his 1979 team was probably even more talented than the one that won a national championship, but finished second to Alabama in the final AP poll.)
The end zones were painted in throwback fashion, and the uniforms were the ones with competition stripes on the shoulders that the Trojans wore between 1972 and 2001. Any resemblance ends there.
Lincoln Riley’s promotion of Jayden Maiava to the starting quarterback spot had its moments. Maiava, the transfer from UNLV who jumped ahead of Miller Moss after the series of close losses, completed 25 of 35 passes for 259 yards and three touchdowns. He showed that his legs could be weapons, too; gains of 13 and 11 yards, off of effective fakes, kept drives going.
But it wasn’t all smooth. He tossed an interception on the Trojans’ second possession that Ceyair Wright returned 45 yards for a touchdown, putting USC in an immediate hole. And he fumbled the ball away late in the third quarter, leading to the touchdown that brought Nebraska within a point.
“I definitely would be smarter with the ball, obviously not turn it over and turn it into a touchdown,” he said afterward. “Yeah, I think just the biggest thing is my ball security.”
He made up for that last miscue by scoring USC’s final touchdown on a 2-yard keeper, making it 28-20 with 2:45 to play. Maiava showed the ability to shake off bad plays and follow them up with good ones.
“He did a good job, kind of, staying in the moment,” Riley said. “I mean, he got on himself on that one, and then certainly on the fumble later in the game. But then, he was able to mentally get past it. And I thought the guys make some big plays around him. I mean, he gave guys opportunities to make plays, really, throughout the game.
“I thought he showed some poise. And you could tell he’s played some college ball.”
It was, Maiava said, about “staying smarter and being more aggressive with just how I play the game, and just being able to trust my eyes and trust in the plan.”
Still, even with some good things on USC’s ledger Saturday – for example, Woody Marks rushing for a career-high 146 yards to go over 1,000 for the season, the first Trojan to do so since Ronald Jones in 2017 – the Trojans were again in jeopardy to the very end. Quarterback Dylan Raiola drove Nebraska to the USC 19 in 13 plays, including a fourth-and-3 conversion at his own 32, before Vance wrestled the ball away in the end zone on the final play to end it.
Translation: These Trojans make these games way closer than they need to be. Or maybe this is a better description: This is who they are, a team that’s not head and shoulders above the teams they’re facing and not savvy enough to make enough of the plays to win those close games.
They could be 10-0, sure, if everything had broken right. More realistically, they could be 8-2 overall and 5-2 in their first season in the Big Ten but for those losses to Michigan, Penn State and Maryland, the first two by a field goal and the last by a point.
And let’s not pretend that the fans aren’t voting with their wallets. The announced crowd at the Coliseum was 75,304, but that included several thousand Nebraska fans, some of whom almost certainly were alumni living in Southern California.
That’s part of the bargain of playing in the Big Ten, because lots of alumni of those schools live out here – perhaps, as the late Jim Murray loved to annually point out, because they saw the sun shining on the Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day and asked themselves why they were still shoveling snow.
As for the seats on the USC bench side of the Coliseum? They weren’t all filled, not close.
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It is worth considering: Two seasons ago USC seemed in an ideal position to make what was then a four-team College Football Playoff. Last year they were 8-5 and won the Holiday Bowl when Moss seemed to be the quarterback of the future.
Now? They need one more victory just to qualify for a bowl. And they’ll be facing (a) a UCLA squad that has to win out to become bowl eligible, and (b) a Notre Dame team that is currently No. 8 in the CFP pecking order and will undoubtedly be playing for seeding when it arrives at the Coliseum in two weeks.
If you’re a USC fan, is this acceptable?
jalexander@scng.com