UCLA Football Preview: An 8-3 Season Has Cooled Off the Seat of Southern Cal's Lincoln Riley
Plus, we look at the Trojan special teams.
The Southern Cal Trojans are now in the fourth year of the Lincoln Riley Experience. It’s safe to say that Trojan fans probably didn’t expect things to go quite the way that they have during Riley’s tenure. After all, in five seasons at Oklahoma, Riley won 55 games, lost only 10, and the Sooners never finished lower than third in the Big 12 Conference. Riley’s results in Los Angeles have not been quite as good. In four seasons at Southern Cal, Riley is currently just 34-17. That’s due, in large part to 2023’s 8-5 record and 2024’s 7-6 record.
This season, Riley has led Southern Cal to an 8-3 mark heading into Saturday’s season finale. The best they could finish, after losing to Oregon last Saturday, would be in a third place tie in the conference standings if they can defeat UCLA this weekend. If the Bruins prevail, the Trojans will finish no better than fifth.
Until last weekend’s 42-27 loss to Oregon, Southern Cal had been having its best season under Riley. Even with that loss, the Trojans could still finish with double-digit wins this season. That makes a Bruin win on Saturday even more important.
After last season, Southern Cal’s offensive coordinator Josh Henson departed for Purdue and Riley replaced him with former quarterbacks coach Luke Huard, the youngest of the three Huard brothers. Unlike Damon and Brock, Luke didn’t play at Washington. Instead, he played quarterback at North Carolina.
Huard was previously the offensive coordinator at Illinois State, Georgia State and Sacramento State, but this year’s Southern Cal team is arguably the best offense Huard has led. Huard has been nominated for the 2025 Broyles Award which honors college football’s top assistant coach each season.
Of course, D’Anton Lynn is still the Southern Cal defensive coordinator. Last week notwithstanding, the Trojan defense has been pretty good this season. They are ranked 54th in total defense and are giving up an average of 352.5 yards per game. Southern Cal is ranked 70th in rushing defense and they are averaging 148.1 yards rushing per game. While the Trojans are ranked 45th in passing yards allowed and averaging 203.6 passing yards per game, that is actually worse than the Bruins who are ranked 29th in that category and allowing 191.1 passing yards per game.
Generally speaking, the Southern Cal depth chart indicates that the Trojans will run a standard 4-3 defense, but a look at the game-by-game starters suggests that they have only begun four of their games with that lineup. They’ve started five games with a nickel defense, and the other two games actually saw them add in an additional defensive tackle.
It’s worth noting that there is one other coach of note who will be guiding the Trojans on Saturday. That’s former NFL defensive coordinator Rob Ryan, whose dad was legendary Bears DC Buddy Ryan. He’s also the brother of former NFL head coach Rex Ryan. Rob served as the DC for four different NFL teams including the Raiders and the Cowboys. His official title with Southern Cal is “Assistant Head Coach for Defense/Linebackers Coach.” That usually is just a way to justify additional pay for an assistant beyond the typical salary level for a position coach, but when you have a former NFL coordinator on staff, you know that they are going to have a lot of input into things.
Let’s look at the Southern Cal Special Teams.
Special Teams
Redshirt freshman Ryon Sayeri will handle the kicking duties for the Trojans this weekend. Sayeri has made 17 of 19 field goal attempts this season. Interestingly, his two misses were shorter kicks. One miss was a 37-yard attempt against Purdue and the other was a 27-yard try against Oregon last week. Despite missing two shorter attempts, he was successful from 54 yards against Michigan. Sayeri has been perfect on all 44 PATs.
Sayeri has also kicked off 78 times this year for Southern Cal. He is averaging 64.28 yards per kickoff, and 56 of his kickoffs have gone for touchbacks while three have landed out of bounds.
While freshman punter William Weisberg as kicked off once this season, that came against Missouri State. So, it’s unlikely that he will kick off on Saturday.
Redshirt senior Sam Johnson will be the punter for Southern Cal. He has punted 20 times this season and is averaging 41.65 yards per punt. Nine of his punts were fair caught while eight landed inside the 20. Two of them were longer than 50 yards in length and only one has gone into the end zone for a touchback.
Of course, the most interesting play involving Johnson didn’t actually have him on the field. That’s because Southern Cal had changed the jersey number of third-string QB (and nephew of the OC) Sam Huard to Johnson’s number 80. To be sure, the Big Ten said after the fact that Southern Cal should have been penalized for having two players playing the same position wearing the same number. Hopefully, UCLA doesn’t fall for this if the Trojans try to pull it off again.
Junior receiver Makai Lemon has returned five of Southern Cal’s six punt returns this season and eight of the 20 kickoff returns. He is averaging just 7.2 yards per punt return with a long of 23 yards. Meanwhile, he’s averaging 18 yards per kickoff return with a long of 24 yards.
Redshirt senior Josiah Zamora returned the only punt Lemon didn’t and he only gained five yards on that return. Zamora has also returned one kickoff for 11 yards.
Eli Sanders and Tanook Hines have each returned four kickoffs. While both players each have a long of 19 yards, Sanders’ average is 14.75 yards per kickoff return while Hines’ average is 13.0 yards per kickoff return.
King Miller has returned two kickoffs. He returned one for 25 yards, the Trojans’ longest kickoff return of the season and the other was a 20-yard return. Finally, Ryan Quintanar has returned one kickoff for 17 yards.
Go Bruins!!! Beat $c!!!
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on paper it should be another blowout. but hopefully our guys show up to play.
I guess 9-3 will be just fine for the spoiled children for what they're paying Riley?