USC has seen enough and it’s time to move on from Lincoln Riley
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LOS ANGELES — As Lincoln Riley walked off the field at the Coliseum on Saturday night after a 41-27 loss to Oregon, the result seemed much larger than the team’s first loss of the season.
USC might be 4-1, but Trojans fans have seen this Riley production before, and they’ve lost interest in sticking around for the inevitable disappointing ending. The early victories create optimism. The first major disappointment comes with assurances that everything the team wants remains possible. Then the losses accumulate, and another season that began with playoff aspirations ends with everyone being asked to get excited about next year.
In 2025, USC started 4-0 before going 5-4 the rest of the season, culminating in a collapse against TCU in the Alamo Bowl. In 2024, USC started 3-1 before going 3-5 to finish the regular season. In 2023, USC started 6-0 before going 1-5 to finish the regular season.
Riley’s high-water mark at USC remains his first season in 2022, and even that year offered a preview of what was coming. The Trojans lost to Utah in the Pac-12 championship game with the program’s first College Football Playoff berth on the line, then blew a 15-point lead to Tulane in the final four minutes of the Cotton Bowl.
That history is why Saturday’s fourth-quarter collapse felt so familiar. In his fifth season, Riley is still explaining why USC couldn’t finish a game that could have changed how people view his program. At some point, those explanations become the strongest argument for finding someone else to lead it.
That point has arrived.
Riley is unlikely to be fired because of the Oregon loss, but USC should begin moving toward a future without him. There is too much evidence now to keep treating these performances as isolated disappointments on the way to something better.
The Trojans tied the game at 27 with 12:41 remaining when Jayden Maiava found Tanook Hines for an 11-yard touchdown. A sold-out crowd of 75,500 had every reason to believe this could finally be the night USC finished the job. The energy was there. The opportunity was there. Even Riley acknowledged afterward that the Coliseum had delivered everything his team could have wanted.
“That moment was probably the most rowdy I’ve heard our crowd since I’ve been here,” Riley said. “It was a hell of an atmosphere in the Coliseum. We had all the momentum in the world.”
Then USC did what it has done too often under Riley. It gave the opportunity away.
With Oregon facing third-and-15 from its own 40, an incomplete pass should have put the Trojans in position to get the ball back. Instead, a roughing-the-passer penalty against Jide Abasiri extended the possession. Oregon eventually scored on Dylan Raiola’s 29-yard touchdown pass to Dakorien Moore, and USC spent the rest of the night chasing a game it never caught.
The Trojans turned the ball over on downs at their own 49 on the next possession. Oregon then took 5:12 off the clock before Jordon Davison’s 2-yard touchdown run made it 41-27 with 2:03 remaining. After tying the score, USC allowed 14 unanswered points and never scored again.
The penalty mattered, but reducing this loss to one player’s mistake would let the head coach off far too easily. USC surrendered 504 yards, failed to record a sack or force a turnover, and allowed Oregon to convert both of its fourth-down attempts. Riley’s offense finished 2 for 11 on third down. There was plenty of responsibility to spread around.
Oregon also had to replace starting quarterback Dante Moore after USC linebacker Desman Stephens blasted him as he gave himself up and slid for a first down. Stephens was ejected for targeting but Riley allowed him to stay on USC's sideline even after celebrating the vicious cheap hit. Raiola came off the bench and completed 19 of 25 passes for 289 yards and two touchdowns. USC couldn’t take control against a team forced to make that adjustment on the road, in front of the loudest crowd Riley could remember during his tenure.
The Ducks were prepared to respond to adversity. USC was left explaining its response to opportunity.
“We had exactly what we wanted,” Riley said. “But against good teams, if you give them opportunities to stay in the game or give them that fresh set of downs, it’s tough to beat good teams that way.”
He is right. He has also been here long enough for USC to expect a team that understands that before the postgame press conference. Discipline, tackling, communication and execution on critical downs are the head coach’s responsibility. When those shortcomings keep deciding the biggest games, going back to work cannot be the entire answer.
The most revealing part of Riley’s press conference came when he was asked about the evolution of his defense.
“I don’t make big picture statements after a game,” he said. “We just finished the game an hour ago.”
He continued: “This is not about any of the games before. It’s not about any of the games coming up. That’s just a fantasy world. That’s not what we live in.”
Riley can ask his players to focus on the next practice and the next opponent. That is understandable. But USC cannot evaluate its head coach by pretending every Saturday exists independently of everything that came before it. The previous games are his record. The repeated collapses are his history. Looking at them together is how a university determines whether its football program is headed in the right direction.
The issues at USC run deeper than Riley, and replacing him won’t automatically solve them. The university has to examine why it keeps finding itself here. But acknowledging institutional problems doesn’t require keeping a coach who has failed to provide a convincing reason to believe the results will change.
Riley can still have success somewhere else. USC has seen that before. Pete Carroll won a Super Bowl after leaving. Ed Orgeron won a national championship at LSU. Lane Kiffin and Steve Sarkisian rebuilt their careers after humiliating exits. A coach’s departure from USC doesn’t have to be the end of his story, and the school doesn’t have to keep waiting for his redemption to happen here.
On Saturday, Riley lost more than a game. He lost the trust of fans who had shown up ready to believe again, along with several boosters who hadn’t texted me about the state of the program since Clay Helton was at the helm. Their frustration carried the exhaustion of people who have had this conversation too many times.
No one can know after five games exactly where this season will end. USC still has an opportunity to respond. But the burden should be on Riley to produce something different, not on everyone else to explain why they no longer expect it.
The Coliseum showed Saturday that the appetite for USC football is still there. Those fans want meaningful games, championship expectations and a reason to believe their program can meet the moment. They gave Riley another chance to show them that future against Oregon.
He gave them another reminder of the past. USC has waited long enough to turn the page.
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