Lincoln Riley raves about quality of new-look USC defensive staff

Going back to his time at Oklahoma , USC head coach Lincoln Riley has been known for his excellent offenses. However, he’s also been criticized for his defenses as they’ve struggled in the past.

Those struggles led to Riley making some major changes to his assistant coaches on the defensive side of the ball over the offseason. Through two games, those moves seemed to have made an impact and Riley raved about the quality of the new-look USC defensive staff to this point.

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“My expectations were pretty high,” Lincoln Riley said . “They were pretty high. They’ve done a good job. Like I’ve told y’all, I knew the quality of the individuals, but how well do they come together? Both them and the players, everybody together, it’s still the power of the unit, not the power of the individuals and that’s been so far so good.”

One major change that Lincoln Riley made was hiring D’Anton Lynn as the team’s new defensive coordinator. He replaced long-time Riley assistant, Alex Grinch . On top of that, Riley also brought in former North Dakota State head coach Matt Entz as the team’s linebackers coach.

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“There’s a lot of big challenges left,” Riley added. “We’ve got a long ways to go.”

USC opened the season with a neutral site game against LSU . That game saw the Trojans hold the Tigers to just 20 points in the win. USC then followed that up with a shutout win against Utah State .

That average of just 10 points allowed per game is a massive improvement from the 34.4 points per game allowed all of last season, even if it is a small sample size that is bound to change over the course of a 12-game regular season.

Now, Lincoln Riley and the Trojans are on a bye week. That will give USC’s defensive staff plenty of time to get prepared for the school’s first Big Ten road trip to The Big House to play the Michigan Wolverines .

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