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After an inconsistent start to the season for USC’s secondary, the defensive coordinator stood in front of a cadre of cameras and didn’t mince words. There were too many coverage busts leading to too many big pass plays, he said. He planned to spend the bye week studying film with microscopic focus in hopes of understanding exactly what had gone wrong.

“The lowlights cannot be that low,” he said. “You can’t just say it happens sometimes. Those things can’t happen.”

That coordinator was Alex Grinch, speaking in September 2023. Six weeks later, he was fired.

The circumstances aren’t quite that dire for the Trojans’ defense — or Grinch’s successor, D’Anton Lynn — in October 2025. But the problems with big pass plays have persisted since then. In fact, they’ve been worse this season than they were under USC’s previous coordinator, in spite of the fact that USC has yet to play a top-40 passing offense.

Through five games, USC has given up 51 pass plays of 10 yards or more. That’s eighth worst in the nation, equating to an average of over 10 such plays per game. And against Illinois, that propensity for allowing explosive plays came back to bite USC in a brutal loss.

“The pass defense has to get better,” USC coach Lincoln Riley said after the game. “It just wasn’t good enough.”

Two days later, when asked about the state of his secondary, Riley took a more encouraging tone. The cornerbacks, he said, “had a few errors here and there.” Take the game’s two biggest pass plays out of the equation, he added, and “it’s going to be really tough for them to beat us.”

Whether his cornerbacks have that same confidence coming out of the loss could be another question. How they respond out of this week’s bye, with key matchups against Michigan and Notre Dame ahead, might ultimately determine the course of USC’s season.

“Confidence, you can’t fake that,” Riley said. “We’re doing enough good things that it should show up and there should be confidence from that, but if we keep making some of the mistakes that we’ve made, whether it’s a busted coverage, or like not leveraging the football — those are controllable on us. Other people aren’t even having to make plays that way.”

Three consequential moments in the second half last Saturday were directly correlated to crippling mistakes from USC defensive backs. An Illinois swing pass in the third quarter went for a 64-yard score after safety Bishop Fitzgerald took a bad angle on running back Justin Feagin, and two corners in the area failed to shed blocks. Then, in the fourth quarter, another cornerback, Braylon Conley, was burned twice on explosive pass plays — first, when he was beat for a touchdown on a slant over the middle, and then, on the ensuing possession, when he fell down defending a hitch route that exploded for 61 yards.

Most of the group’s most glaring mistakes on big plays this season have been attributed to breakdowns in communication. Those issues were only exacerbated last week in the absence of safety Kamari Ramsey, who had recently taken over relaying calls from the sideline to the secondary.

Ramsey should return next week, but Riley said this week that communication on defense has been a primary focus for USC.

To Fitzgerald, the week off was a chance to “fully reset everything” in the secondary.

“It’s really just focusing more on the same things and trying to execute as a whole,” Fitzgerald said. “As a defense, if 10 guys do one thing but one person does the wrong thing, it’s a busted play. We can’t afford that. So we’re just trying to get everybody on the same page.”

As the Trojans enter the most difficult stretch of their schedule, it’s not clear who the coaches will trust most at corner going forward.

Injuries early this season robbed USC of two of its most experienced cornerbacks, Prophet Brown and Chasen Johnson. Then last week, as USC’s secondary unraveled in the loss to Illinois, redshirt senior DeCarlos Nicholson was in and out of the lineup with what appeared to be a nagging hamstring.

Nicholson, nonetheless, has been USC’s most consistent cover corner through five weeks. Across from him, redshirt freshman Marcelles Williams has started the last three games, but hasn’t by any means run away with the job.

Senior DJ Harvey was brought in from the transfer portal to be a major contributor at corner, but he has fallen far short of those expectations. He played only five snaps last Saturday, in spite of the team’s dire depth at corner, but one of those plays resulted in a devastating pass interference call on Illinois’ game-winning drive.

“We’re pretty young out there on the perimeter right now, without having Prophet and Chasen,” Riley said. “We need [Harvey’s] experience to show up. His emergence in this next phase of the season will be important for us, and he’s going to get every opportunity to do it.”

The most uncertain spot in the secondary has been in the slot, where Riley has yet to find a capable replacement for Brown. But USC might have an answer on the way in the form of true freshman Alex Graham.

Graham was an early standout during USC’s preseason camp but has been on the shelf since. Coaches have suggested he could return as soon as next week against Michigan and potentially step into a significant role right away in the slot, where, to this point, USC has relied on Ramsey playing out of position.

There’s not much depth at defensive back for USC to mine after that. True freshman RJ Sermons was one of the more coveted cornerback prospects in America, when he reclassified in the spring to enroll at USC a year early.

Riley didn’t rule out the possibility that Sermons, who should be a senior in high school, could play a critical role down the stretch. He said USC was “pushing it” with both he and Graham in hopes that they’d be ready “sooner than later.”

“They’re two guys that are talented enough to contribute for us right now,” Riley said. “You’re on just a race against time to get them ready, to pump as many reps into those guys. Because they clearly have the ability.”

Regardless, it’s going to take more than two true freshmen to steady USC’s secondary. The more pressing question now, after a suspect start this season, is whether the rest of the group is able to right the ship from here.

“One game doesn’t define them as a player, doesn’t define us as a defense,” safety Christian Pierce said. “We just keep our heads high and put the best foot forward.”

Dave Roberts started out of the dugout with a walk.

Once Blake Snell caught his gaze, it turned into a trot.

With two out in the seventh inning, and Snell trying to put the finishing touches on his best performance in a Dodgers uniform, Roberts appeared to be coming to the mound after a pair of walks to turn to his shaky bullpen with a three-run lead.

As he usually does when removing a pitcher, his gait was slow — at least, initially.

Once Snell saw him coming, however, Roberts picked up his pace — as he will sometimes do when electing to leave a pitcher in the game.

This time, it was the latter.

After a brief discussion between manager and starting pitcher, Snell stayed in.

Five throws later, the $180-million offseason signee rewarded the decision, striking out Otto Kemp with a 95-mph fastball to put an emphatic ending on his scoreless seven-inning start, one that lifted the Dodgers to a 5-0 win over the Philadelphia Phillies.

Entering Wednesday, all the discussion around the Dodgers had centered on the bullpen. The slumping unit was coming off two of its worst performances of the season. The majority of Roberts’ pregame address with reporters was spent dissecting how to fix it.

“Before the results, has to be confidence,” Roberts said, comparing the relief corps’ struggles to the second-half scuffles that the offense only recently emerged from. “It’s just kind of trying to reset a mentality, a mindset and expect that things happen. … You can’t chase a zero in an inning until you execute the first pitch, and then keep going like that. And I think that right now you can see that they’re kind of trying a little too hard.”

On Wednesday night, however, Snell made their job easy.

Efficient from the start with the kind of aggressive, attacking game plan he had acknowledged was missing in his last three outings, Snell went to work quickly against the Phillies, retiring the side on eight pitches (and two strikeouts) in the first inning, en route to setting down the first eight batters he faced.

Brief trouble arose in the third, when Bryson Stott and Harrison Bader had back-to-back singles.

But then Snell froze Kyle Schwarber with a curveball, one of the seven punchouts he recorded with the pitch. He had a season-high 12 strikeouts on the night.

And after that, the Phillies didn’t put another runner aboard until the seventh, with Snell breezing through the next 12 batters.

In the meantime, the Dodgers built a lead. Freddie Freeman homered to lead off the second. Ben Rortvedt (starting his third straight game behind the plate, even with Dalton Rushing back from a leg injury) added an RBI single later in the inning, following an Andy Pages hit-and-run single that put runners on the corners.

Another run came around in the fourth, after Pages worked a two-out walk, stole second, took third on a wild pickoff throw and scored on an RBI single from Kiké Hernández (who played third base in place of Max Muncy, who still felt “fuzzy” on Tuesday from a hit-by-pitch he took to the head over the weekend).

And from there, the Dodgers watched Snell cruise, with the $182-million offseason acquisition attacking the corners of the strike zone while also inducing misses on 24 of 54 swings.

The night culminated in the seventh, after walks to Nick Castellanos and Max Kepler drew Roberts out of the dugout. In the bullpen, left-hander Alex Vesia was getting warm. For a brief moment, it appeared the game would be in the hands of the relievers.

Snell had other ideas, signaling Roberts to hurry to the mound in the middle of his walk before seemingly pleading his case to stay in.

Whatever he said, Roberts listened.

Snell stayed on the rubber. A crowd of 50,859 roared in approval.

Against his final batter, Kemp, Snell fell behind, missing low with a changeup before pulling a fastball wide. Undeterred, he went back on the attack, getting one foul ball with a heater on the inner half, then another with a curveball that leaked over the plate. The count was 2-and-2. Chavez Ravine rose to its feet.

The next pitch — Snell’s 112th of the night — was another fastball, this time on the upper, outside corner at 95.3 mph. Kemp swung through it. Snell screamed and pumped his fist. In the dugout, Roberts raised an arm in the air, then began clapping as Snell walked off to a raucous ovation.

The next two innings were refreshingly simple. Alex Vesia retired the side in the top of the eighth. The Dodgers made it a five-run lead by scoring twice in the bottom half of the frame, including on Shohei Ohtani’s 51st home run of the season. Embattled closer Tanner Scott spun a stress-free ninth, pitching three consecutive scoreless outings for the first time since early July.

Come October, that’s the kind of blueprint the Dodgers (who maintained a two-game lead in the National League West over the San Diego Padres) will have to try and replicate.

Their bullpen still needs fixing. Their relief issues aren’t solved. But more gems like Snell’s would certainly help.

For five years, I dodged every bullet.

I don’t know how I managed to beat COVID-19 for so long, even as family, friends and colleagues got hit with the coronavirus. Although I took precautions from the beginning, with masking and vaccinations, I was also out in public a lot for work and travel.

But my luck has finally run out, and it must have been the air travel that did me in. I returned from a cross-country trip with a razor blade sore throat and a stubborn headache, followed by aches and pains.

The first test was positive.

I figured it had to be wrong, given my super-immunity track record.

The second test was even more positive.

So I’ve been quarantined in a corner of the house, reaching alternately for Tylenol and the thermometer. Everything is a little fuzzy, making it hard to distinguish between the real and the imagined.

For instance, how can it be true that just as I get COVID for the first time, the news is suddenly dominated by COVID-related stories?

It has to be a fever-induced hallucination. There’s no other way to explain why, as COVID surges yet again with another bugger of a strain, the best tool against the virus — vaccine — is under full assault by the leaders of the nation.

They are making it harder, rather than easier, to get medicine recommended by the overwhelming majority of the legitimate, non-crackpot wing of the medical community.

Under the new vaccine policies, prices are up. Permission from doctors is needed. Depending on your age or your home state, you could be out of luck.

Meanwhile, President Trump fired Susan Monarez, the head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, essentially for putting her own professional integrity and commitment to public service above crackpot directives from a cabal of vaccine skeptics.

And following Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s cancellation of $500 million in mRNA vaccine research, Trump is demanding that pharmaceutical companies show proof that vaccines work.

My eyes are red and burning, but can COVID be entirely to blame?

I got a booster before my travels, even though I knew it might not stand up to the new strain of COVID. It’s possible I have a milder case than I might have had without the vaccine. But on that question and many others, as new waves keep coming our way, wouldn’t the smart move be more research rather than less?

Trump downplayed the virus when it first surfaced in 2019 and 2020. Then he blamed it on China. He resisted masking, and lemmings by the thousands got sick and died. Then he got COVID himself. At one point, he recommended that people get the vaccine.

Now he’s putting on the brakes?

My headache is coming back, my eyes are still burning, and unless my Tylenol is laced with LSD, I think I just saw a clip in which Kennedy and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attempted 50 pull-ups and 100 push-ups in 10 minutes.

I appreciate the health and fitness plug, and because Kennedy and I are the same age — 71 — it’s impressive to see him in the gym.

But there’s something that has to be said about the Kennedy-Hegseth workout tape:

They’re cheating.

Take a look for yourself, and don’t be fooled by the tight T-shirts worn by these two homecoming kings.

Those were not full chin-ups or push-ups.

Not even close.

Cutting corners is the wrong message to send to the nation’s children, or to any age group. And how is anyone going to make it to the gym if they come down with COVID because they couldn’t get vaccinated?

Honestly, the whole thing has to be a fever dream I’m having, because in the middle of the workout, Kennedy said, and I quote, “It was President Trump who inspired us to do this.”

He is many things, President Trump. Fitness role model is not one of them, no matter how many times he blasts out of sand traps on company time.

Getting back to cutting corners, Kennedy said in slashing mRNA research that “we have studied the science,” with a news release link to a 181-page document purportedly supporting his claim that the vaccines “fail to protect effectively.”

That document was roundly eviscerated by hordes of scientists who were aghast at the distortions and misinterpretations by Kennedy.

“It’s either staggering incompetence or willful misrepresentation,” said Jake Scott, an infectious-disease physician and Stanford University professor, writing for the media company STAT. “Kennedy is using evidence that refutes his own position to justify dismantling tools we’ll desperately need when the next pandemic arrives.”

I lost my sense of smell a few days ago, but even I can tell you that stinks.

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John Middleton takes a bold step as he goes from vicar to villain in C4 soap Hollyoaks. The former Emmerdale legend has spoken about his time on set and his role as Froggy Black.

He played much-loved vicar Ashley Thomas in Emmerdale for 20 years, but now John Middleton has taken on a much darker role as Fraser “Froggy” Black – grandfather to villainess Grace Black and her sister Clare Devine – in Hollyoaks.

After years in Longmere Prison, Froggy is finally out – and heading straight back into the heart of his fractured family. “He does want to bring the family together,” John, 71, says. “For what purpose, that’s yet to be revealed. But he wants to restore the relationship between Clare and Grace.”

One of the highlights of his new role, John says, is working with Tamara Wall and Gemma Bissix, who play Grace and Clare. “They ask me, ‘What do you tell your wife when you go back home?’”, John shares.

“I say, ‘I don’t tell her anything. I sit in a corner, occasionally hugging my knees and rocking backwards and forwards,’” he jokes. “They’re a laugh to work with!”

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Froggy made his first appearance in the Chester-based show in early August, seen behind bars with Tom Cunningham, whom he’d taken under his wing as a financial advisor.

When his granddaughters were arrested for their part in Clare’s husband’s trafficking ring, the reunion was icy. Still, Froggy was determined to win over Grace – despite his hatred for Clare.

Now, John teases that Froggy could blow the village apart. “He knows things, particularly about one particular person,” John says. “The past being revealed would be catastrophic for their present.

He knows something about people he’s most closely working with, which is going to be revealed. He knows a lot of secrets, he knows where all the bodies are buried – quite literally.

His past is possibly murderous, his present is possibly vengeful. Froggy is totally unpredictable. You never know what he’s going to do next.”

With secrets come enemies – but Froggy isn’t fazed. “He’s an incredibly manipulative person so the fact he’s got enemies doesn’t bother him,” John admits. “The fact that he has control over his enemies is essential to him.”

This isn’t John’s first brush with Hollyoaks . In 1997 he popped up as Cindy Cunningham’s doctor – a role he admits he’d forgotten about.

His soap career was then peppered with cameos. In the 1990s he appeared twice in Coronation Street – first as John Hargreaves, the driver who accidentally killed Lisa Duckworth, and later as a hospital consultant. Even Emmerdale wasn’t entirely new to him when he took on Ashley’s role.

“I was a policeman about a year and a half before becoming Ashley,” he says. “But Froggy is a completely different character, which is why I’m doing it.”

John says the whole Hollyoaks team made his transition easy. And though he still struggles with nerves, executive producer Hannah Cheers has assured him he’s in the right place.

“You adjust quickly to it and it was helped because everyone here is lovely,” he says. “My first few scenes, I was nervous. I was completely reassured when I bumped into Hannah and she said, ‘I really love what you’re doing.’ That was a great relief!”

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