Trojans defense makes the play it had to
BERKELEY ❯❯ The man trapped in a burning house laid it all on the line, motioning his players towards him tight in a huddle Saturday afternoon after another confounding mistake, getting on a knee and staring into their eyes as a season crumbled.
Alex Grinch, really, has never been too loud. The USC defensive coordinator has led, always, with accountability, with comments so direct and so bold they'll linger and ignite in players' minds. Never one, said Larry Kehres, his former coach at Mount Union, to fist-pump.
Yet here he was, on the sidelines as a game against Cal rapidly slipped away from USC, pumping his fist, yelling, with arms wildly fluctuating, at a run defense that was getting put through a paper shredder. Visibly smacking the turf in passion, Grinch's very job seemed to hang by a thread. Public perception of Grinch is at such a low that former Trojans receiver Keyshawn Johnson — explicitly affiliated with USC-supporting NIL collective The Tommy Group — tweeted “I dislike our DC” in the first half.
He seemed impervious to the pressure, though, when asked Tuesday. And in this moment, he was simply a coordinator trying to light a fire in his group, after Cal running back Jaydn Ott had run for two touchdowns with all the difficulty of a toddler stampeding through grass.
“We gotta believe in our job, go out there and trust each other, that's all he told us,” safety Calen Bullock said postgame. “Believe in it.”
Jobs went unfinished, consistently, in a deathdrop-level rollercoaster of
a game Saturday afternoon. Ott ran for three scores in about 20 minutes. Cal quarterback Fernando Mendoza, who'd started all of two games prior, accounted for four touchdowns. Penalty flags flew in the secondary, and tackles went missed, and USC was down two touchdowns with 14 minutes to play in the fourth quarter.
And somehow, the job ended complete as safety Jaylin Smith skied to knock away a two-point conversion attempt with under a minute left, the difference between USC's season dead or alive, the Trojans squeaking out a 50-49 win to stay at 5-1 in the Pac-12 and fight another day.
“Obviously, we want to play better, so obviously, we got to do that,” coach Lincoln Riley said postgame. “But I'm really, really damn proud of the group. They could've folded there in that fourth quarter.”
This was a college football game as drunk as the houses lining frat row on the walk to the stadium, thumping three hours before kick-off with dubstep bass and red solo cups strewn across the sidewalks. The kickoff was delayed — “welcome to California,” as a smiling Riley put it postgame — by a midfield protest related to the suspension of a Cal professor. With USC down 28-17 just before half, Riley tried to call for a timeout, only for the command center to radio to on-field referees to signal for halftime, as the coach explained postgame.
Except, after a long discussion with Riley and fuming Cal coach Justin Wilcox, the refs ruled there was a second left on the clock. Unbelievably, USC would play a play after halftime from the spot they left off. Unbelievably, kicker Denis Lynch had minutes, then, at halftime to warm up for a kick that should have been made minutes earlier.
“Which, after all that — we missed the damn thing,” Riley said postgame.
At halftime, though, with Riley's extended referee-related absence, player leaders spoke up to keep the energy high, center Justin Dedich said postgame. And it was Eric Gentry, the 6-foot-6 limber-armed Slenderman who'd fallen into the shadows of USC's linebacker room, who was USC's game-changer in the second half.
On Cal's first drive of the third quarter, with USC down 28-17, he swallowed up a fourth-down run for a solo tackle to force a turnover. Two drives later, he read a Fernando Mendoza pass perfectly and reached back to snare a one-handed interception, coming away pointing at his arm like the D'Angelo Russell “ice in my veins” celebration.
With the score tied and time waning in the fourth quarter, he forced a fumble to give the ball back to USC's offense.
“It was a humbling experience, ... I always say, you can't cheat the football gods,” Gentry said postgame. “You put in the work, somehow, some way, life just, it happens to lean towards you.”
At 43-43, with all eyes on Caleb Williams — orchestrating USC's offense at a level he hadn't shown since Arizona — MarShawn Lloyd screamed up the right sideline for a 56-yard gain, setting up a gimmie of an Austin Jones score. Mendoza drove Cal right back, though, hitting receiver Jaivian Thomas for a score, setting up a chance to seal the game on a successful two-point try.
But Gentry draped in coverage, and Smith knocked a ball away, and USC is somehow 7-2.
The Trojans, despite all the hand-wringing, are still in contention for the Pac-12. They've made just enough plays to stay alive. When asked if he believed this team could still win a conference title, Riley was adamant: “Hell yeah, I do.”
They'll need considerably more consistency, though, from a defense that has been anything but. And Riley chose to focus on the simple, when asked postgame if he anticipated any philosophical or coaching changes defensively if errors continued.
“I'm trying to beat Washington next week,” Riley said. “Those are my thoughts on it, that's my job ... sitting 5-1 in the best conference in America, to try to go win it. And that's where my focus is.”