The USC Trojans went to the Big House and almost stole a victory from the Michigan Wolverines. Or was the victory stolen from them? We will get to more on that in a bit.
Ultimately, the Trojans battled back to take a late lead, but could not hold on as they fell 27-24.
There were a lot of mistakes, some suspect playcalling, egregious officiating, and a lot of heart, grit, and fight.
Here is everything we learned from the USC Trojans first Big Ten game.
This USC Trojans Team Has Fight
The beginning of the game did not go as planned for USC. The first quarter saw the Trojans gain a total of 3 yards, and -5 yards rushing. They finished the half with -11 yards.
After falling behind 14-0, the Trojans looked like they were in real trouble. In fact, a lot of people were already counting them out and saying that the defense was no better than it was last year.
To their credit, the offense, which should be the strength of the team, looked absolutely lost.
But Miller Moss countered Michigan’s scoring drive with a gutsy drive of his own that led to a field goal.
The Trojans went into the half down 14-3 but with a little more confidence.
The 2nd half was virtually all Trojans, sans two plays (pick six, Mullings 63-yard run that set up the game-winning touchdown).
I am not going to recap the entire 2nd half, but USC demonstrated a grit and fight that they didn’t have last year. I don’t think there were any games last year where the team flat-out quit, but there were definitely examples of when things started to turn bad, the entire team seemed to implode and could not dig themselves out of it.
USC proved on Saturday that they belong in the Big Ten and they will fight on every play until the final whistle.
Also Read: Former USC Trojans QB Absolutely Balled Out Today
The Offensive Line Is A Work In Progress
To put it nicely, the offensive line did not play well on Saturday. Miller Moss was lucky to make it out of this game uninjured as he had relentless pressure in his face all day. According to PFF, Michigan finished with 27 pressures, 7 hits, and 4 sacks.
To put that in perspective, Moss had 51 pass attempts. So he was pressured on more than half of his dropbacks (a lot of these dropbacks were screen passes, so the pressure rate could have been even higher).
The offensive line play was so bad that Lincoln Riley made a change at halftime, benching starting Left Tackle Elijah Paige.
Staring Right Tackle Mason Murphy was moved to LT and Tobias Raymond took over at Right Tackle. Maybe this was an error on PFF’s end, but Paige, Murphy, and Raymond all received ZERO pass block grades.
Error or not, that’s not good.
The run blocking did improve in the second half and Woody Marks was able to somehow finish with over 100 yards rushing on the day. The rushing did aid in opening things up a bit in the passing game, but it was still clearly the weakest part of the team.
Michigan may have the best defensive line that USC will face all year, so give them a lot of credit, but the Trojans have to continue to improve in the trenches or they will never reach their long-term goals.
Related: USC Football Drops In Latest AP Top 25
The Officiating, Or Lack There Of, Was Horrendous
At the end of the day, you cannot blame the refs. You have to be able to take the officiating out of the game and do things on your own terms so you don’t allow them to decide the outcome.
However, penalties are penalties because they give the team committing them either an advantage or a greater chance of injuring someone. Both can be said about the way this game unfolded.
There were multiple, clear and obvious missed calls.
Missed calls are gonna happen. In reality, and talk to anyone who has played football, there could be a penalty called on every single play. The point is to call the clear and obvious ones and the ones that have a direct effect on the play.
Two missed calls, the hit on Lemon and the horse caller on Lane, resulted in injuries (Lane did return). Missed holding calls (at the point of the ball carrier) resulted in touchdowns.
As you can watch above, the game-winning touchdown had a missed holding call. Again, holding happens on almost every play, but when the ball carrier literally runs through the gap that a defender was held (or pulled out of) that has to be called. And if it isn’t, the officiating crew deserves to be questioned.
This was the USC Trojans first official game in the Big Ten. We will soon see if this is the norm with officiating or if Saturday’s game was just an unfortunate outlier.