lincoln riley

USC coach Lincoln Riley kept his offense on the field on fourth and four at the USC 13.

The decision was so confounding, Penn State coach Matt Campbell burned the Nittany Lions’ final timeout with 4:15 remaining. Riley grinned with his team protecting a 31-23 lead in front of a rowdy crowd of more than 106,000 fans decked in all white at Beaver Stadium Saturday night.

USC punted after the timeout and Riley watched his maligned defense recover Penn State receiver Brett Eskildsen’s fumble on the Nittany Lions’ first snap of the ensuing drive.

With no timeouts remaining, Penn State had no room for error while trying to stop USC. The Trojans burned as much clock as they could and were again prepared to snap the ball on fourth down when the Penn State defense jumped offside, effectively sealing the Trojans’ win.

Riley has long been scrutinized for clock management and late-game decision making, but in one of the most hostile environments in the country, he helped the No. 19 Trojans work their way to a 31-23 win.

USC (6-1, 3-1 Big Ten) had the better record and national ranking, but Penn State (3-3, 0-3) was favored to win by 1½ points in a sign of the plunging confidence in Riley and his Trojans.

“We came in here against the odds,” Riley said during his postgame on-field interview with NBC. “Everybody in the country counted us out and said we weren’t going to win a tough road game.

“Trojans came [to] play. Great environment here. Tonight the white-out game went cardinal and gold.”

Quarterback Jayden Maiava, who had struggled at times the past few weeks, completed 21 of 33 passes for 301 yards, three touchdowns and no interceptions. He was sacked once.

Trent Mosley, who returned after missing the past two games with an injury, and Tanook Hines delivered a series of highlight catches to support Maiava. Mosley hauled in nine passes for 111 yards and a touchdown, while Hines added four catches for 82 yards and another touchdown.

King Miller ran for 102 yards in 19 carries and scored off a Maiava option pitch.

USC wide receiver Kayden Dixon-Wyatt catches a touchdown pass ahead of Penn State linebacker Tony Rojas during the second half of the Trojans’ 31-23 win Saturday.

(Barry Reeger / Associated Press)

The teams traded touchdowns and field goals early, entering halftime tied 17-17.

Riley made the curious decision to open the third quarter with an onside kick, but his defense limited Penn State to a field goal.

Miller ran for a 13-yard touchdown on USC’s next drive.

Penn State mounted a long drive that the Trojans’ defense again limited to a field goal, giving USC a 24-23 lead with 14:52 left in the fourth quarter.

Maiava then led a 10-play, 71-yard scoring drive. On the final snap of the drive, Maiava had time to sit in the pocket, scan the field and connect with Kayden Dixon-Wyatt for a 10-yard touchdown. USC hit the extra point and led 31-23 with 11:11 left in the fourth quarter.

USC’s defense forced a Penn State punt and Riley worked the clock to protect the win.

Desman Stephens II returned from his one-game suspension for his hit on Oregon quarterback Dante Moore and led the Trojans with nine tackles.

Freshman Luke Wafle delivered five tackles and one massively important sack of Penn State quarterback Rocco Becht for a loss of 10 yards with six minutes left in regulation.

It was raining in State College late in the fourth quarter. The Trojans’ defense danced on the sideline as the song “Umbrella” played in the stadium and the Trojans lingered on the field to soak up a big road victory.

When Lincoln Riley hired Gary Patterson to be his third defensive coordinator in five seasons, the USC head coach naturally pointed to Patterson’s impressive track record.

His reputation, after all, was as one of the great defensive minds in the modern history of college football, a coach who, at Texas Christian, knew how to get more out of lesser talent. It stood to reason that he could do the same at USC, where they’d just signed the nation’s No. 1 recruiting class. And through the spring and summer, that appeared to be the case, as coaches and players alike raved about their new coordinator, who earlier this year was enshrined in the College Football Hall of Fame.

But as the Trojans approach the midway point of an increasingly tense campaign, Patterson and his defense have fallen drastically short of those expectations.

As USC welcomes Washington to the Coliseum with its season on the brink, its defense is currently allowing more than 6.14 yards per play, good for 115th nationally. The secondary, which has struggled with consistent miscommunication, is allowing 8.4 yards per pass play — more than either of former coordinator Alex Grinch’s defenses allowed at USC. And big plays are becoming a big problem. Only three defenses the country have allowed more explosive plays of 20-plus yards than USC (23), which is also in line with Grinch’s defenses.

USC coach Lincoln Riley and defensive coordinator Gary Patterson talk after a loss to Oregon at the Coliseum on Saturday.

(Ronaldo Bolanos/Los Angeles Times)

And all this despite the fact four of the Trojans’ first five games were against opponents who were expected to struggle against USC’s far superior talent.

Patterson has yet to answer questions about those early results. That’s because unlike Riley’s first two defensive coordinators at USC, who spoke at least weekly, Patterson has not spoken to reporters since the preseason.

Without any explanation from him for USC’s early issues, the numbers don’t exactly paint a promising portrait of Patterson’s season. But while Riley acknowledged that the defense has “had some breakdowns at all levels” and must “play tighter in all areas,” the coach insisted Thursday that the Trojans were close to reaching their potential on defense, again reassuring that there was “a lot of good on tape” on that side of the ball.

“We don’t necessarily need any level of the defense to make this massive jump,” Riley said. “We just need each level to play a little bit better and each level to play a little bit better together.”

Outside of USC’s Week 1 shutout of Fresno State, though, the Trojans haven’t looked particularly good at any level of the defense. The pass rush has been lacking, with only three sacks across USC’s four other games. And on the back end, the Trojans continue to be caught flat-footed, with defensive backs out of position.

One former USC defensive back, Max Williams, posited on social media that the Trojans’ secondary appeared to be getting the defensive calls too close to the snap of the ball. In another social media breakdown by a former Trojan player, former quarterback Max Browne suggested that USC’s defensive backs were often out of position before the play began, putting them behind.

Those problems have seemingly been exacerbated the past two weeks in Big Ten play, as Rutgers and Oregon combined to pile up 964 yards on USC’s defense. And the Ducks did it with a backup quarterback at the helm in Dylan Raiola, who converted all seven of his third- and fourth-down pass attempts.

Patterson’s defense will have another tough test this week in Washington quarterback Demond Williams Jr., who’s just as much a threat with his legs as his arm. The Trojans already had trouble with a dual-threat quarterback earlier this season, allowing Louisiana’s Lunch Winfield to rush for 94 yards during a Week 2 Trojans win.

Any further struggles from here for USC’s defense could spiral in a hurry. The Trojans travel to Penn State next weekend and still have No. 5 Indiana and No. 6 Ohio State on the schedule. They’ll have to win two of those three, plus all their other games, if they still hope to contend for the College Football Playoff.

Those hopes hinge largely on Patterson, who Riley bet before the season would finally bring him salvation on the defensive end.

Riley still has faith that bet will pay off. Mostly because “there’s very few that have been through as much as he has.”

“Trust me, nobody takes it more personal than him or takes more responsibility than he does,” Riley said of Patterson. “He’s done this for a long time. He’s done it at a high level. And there’s nobody, you know, more committed to getting it fixed.”

After 72 particularly miserable hours for his football program, Lincoln Riley took his place behind a lectern Tuesday and tried to assure that things at USC weren’t as bad as they looked.

“There’s a lot of things to be proud of in this football program right now,” Riley assured. “Those that really look into it and look at what’s happening here will see that and understand that. There’s people on the outside that just don’t.”

But the optics at USC, since Saturday’s 41-27 home loss to Oregon, certainly couldn’t have been much worse for Riley. Because it wasn’t just that his Trojans lost a critical game to a bitter rival, one framed for weeks — months, even — as a must-win. Or that in its wake, Ducks coach Dan Lanning had savaged him or his program multiple times.

It was what happened in the midst of that loss, as well as the reactions after, that only made matters much worse for USC.

The days since have prompted questions across the country about Riley’s future at USC, where he’s midway through his fifth season as coach. One person familiar with the situation but not authorized to speak publicly on the matter told The Times that “all options are on the table” with Riley after the loss and the events of last weekend.

The chain of regrettable decisions began the moment Trojan linebacker Desman Stephens lowered his shoulder into the helmet of sliding Oregon quarterback Dante Moore in the second quarter Saturday evening. Moore’s head slammed hard into the ground, and he laid motionless for several minutes surrounded by medical personnel, until he was lifted onto a backboard and loaded into an ambulance that had driven onto the field.

The whole unsettling scene was made far worse by Stephens’ reaction in the immediate aftermath of the hit. After jawing with Oregon players, the junior linebacker was seen taunting the Oregon sideline and celebrating on his way back to USC’s side of the field. He continued high-fiving teammates while the Ducks surrounded their quarterback, who was diagnosed with a concussion but no other serious injuries.

The next morning, both Stephens and his coach said in a statement that his actions were “unacceptable,” “inexcusable” and “completely inappropriate.” But after the game, Riley first said he didn’t see Stephens celebrate the hit. And when Riley was asked why Stephens was allowed to stay on the sideline for the second half, the coach responded, incredulously, “‘cause he’s on our football team.” He wished Moore well, but said nothing further about Stephens or his vicious hit.

“It’s an easy answer,” said Petros Papadakis, a local radio host and former USC captain. “I understand you can’t have eyes everywhere as a head coach. But even if you didn’t see it, by the end of the game you know most of college football has turned against you in the last hour.

“The story didn’t go away because Lincoln didn’t get in front of it.”

It was clear that night, among USC’s leadership, that the immediate response wasn’t adequate enough. So the next morning, athletic director Jen Cohen met with Riley to discuss a suspension for Stephens. They settled on one game.

On Tuesday, Riley took a different tone. He said he was “disappointed with how [Stephens] handled it” and that he “needs to have more awareness.”

Riley also asked for understanding from those who have been critical of Stephens, whom he described as “a young person who made a mistake.”

“Consider if that was your son,” he said, “how would you want it handled?”

But three days later, the college football world was still litigating Stephens’ hit. The story was still alive, in part, due to a short documentary from the game, published by Oregon on Tuesday morning. In it was a clip that would unexpectedly make things even worse at USC.

The clip is of USC’s radio booth, where Pete Arbogast has been the Trojans’ play-by-play guy for the past quarter century. From his perch in the Coliseum press box, Arbogast is painting the scene of the play when Moore was injured. Except, in this case, listeners heard a different account of his slide and Stephens’ hit than what happened on the field.

“He did not try to slide feet first!” Arbogast said in the moment.

Arbogast went on to say that Moore “ducked into that hit. I did not see him put his feet out first. I saw him dive forward.”

When confronted with the replay moments later, Arbogast stood by what he said, claiming that Moore’s slide was “more of a knee-first slide.” Even Arbogast’s radio partner — former Trojan defensive tackle Shaun Cody — raised his eyebrows at the suggestion.

Both Arbogast and the university declined to comment on the situation when reached by The Times.

Papadakis, who previously worked on the broadcast with Arbogast, called it “a bad look,” but explained that Arbogast was “usually defending USC or trying to spin something positive.”

That job was left to Riley and his players on Tuesday. Though, some were more convincing than others.

“This is a time of adversity, the best time to come together as one,” left tackle Elijah Paige said.

“Times like these you tend to see teams fall apart,” quarterback Jayden Maiava added, “but this team is such a tight team and we’re all bought into each other.”

Riley, meanwhile, pointed for the second day in a row to a stretch early in Saturday’s fourth quarter against Oregon, when the Coliseum had reached a fevered pitch and momentum seemed to be swinging in the Trojans’ favor.

Except, it never did. USC allowed two fourth-quarter touchdowns after that. Riley still tried to find the silver lining.

“We didn’t get run out of the stadium,” Riley said. “There’s a lot of good on that tape. You don’t have a chance to win a game like that if you don’t do some things pretty well.”