LOS ANGELES — Pregame warmups are always full-out before the USC football team takes the field for kickoff. From dialogue to drills, it’s all 100%.
“Every single time,” defensive lineman Devan Thompkins said. “You have to. We want the warm-ups to be harder than the game. Just like practice.”
But somewhere between warmups and the first snap of Saturday’s 34-32 road loss to Illinois, that intensity was lost. The Trojans’ defense had its worst performance of the season.
Defensive coordinator D’Anton Lynn, who usually addresses reporters on a weekly basis, was not available to the media on Wednesday due to illness. His players relayed a clear message that was given to the team.
“It just took us too long to get adjusted to the game,” Thompkins said. “We’ve definitely got to start faster. It all starts in practice. We just gotta attack practice better, better mentality. We’re never satisfied with the results, but we can’t be as satisfied with good. We’re looking to be great.”
Illinois totaled 502 yards of offense, and the 331 yards passing and 171 yards rushing were both season-highs allowed by USC’s defense.
Individual defensive performances were overshadowed. Defensive lineman Jahkeem Stewart and safety Christian Pierce both recovered goal-line fumbles and Pierce had a season-high six tackles.
“We knew how we lost,” Pierce said. “As leaders on our defensive side, we kind of went through our position groups and really made sure we stood on everything we really play by and our standard.”
The defensive backs are the position group that has struggled the most early in this season. Injuries to Prophet Brown and Alex Graham have hampered the cornerback room, and the group struggled even more without key communicator and nickelback Kamari Ramsey, who missed Saturday’s game due to food poisoning.
Illini quarterback Luke Altmyer threw a 64-yard touchdown pass to Kaden Feagin that extended the Illini’s lead to 24-10 midway through the third quarter, and Altmyer connected with Justin Bowick for a 25-yard touchdown and a 31-17 advantage in the first minute of the fourth quarter.
“We didn’t leverage the football properly on two plays, and they made us pay. That’s the biggest takeaway,” head coach Lincoln Riley told reporters on Tuesday. “You can’t take a team like that and allow a hitch route and a seam pass to go the distance like they did.”
Riley added that he isn’t concerned about a dip in the secondary’s confidence and he’s encouraged by players like Kendarius Reddick, who had five tackles in his first game as a true freshman.
“Dee battled his tail off,” Riley said. “He actually made a lot of really good plays. We had a few errors here and there that have got to get better. We made some plays and got beat a few times.”
There was also a mismatch in physicality on Saturday, according to Pierce, that allowed Illinois’ run game to bully its way through USC’s run blocking.
USC (4-1 overall, 2-1 Big Ten) will attempt to ramp up the intensity for the rest of this bye week before it returns to the Coliseum to take on Michigan (3-1, 1-0), which is the second-best rushing offense in the Big Ten Conference at a clip of 253.5 rushing yards per game.
“They really just pushed us back,” Pierce said of Illinois. “They were more physical than us, truthfully, and we just need to come back the next game, and we will be more physical in the next game, and we will attack the ball a different way.”