Commentary: Lincoln Riley’s latest defensive reboot at USC is nowhere close to playoff-ready

How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat? How can you compete for championships if you don’t have a championship defense?

Sorry folks, but rules are rules.

USC just keeps trying to bend them. Trying to break them. As if universal laws don’t apply to the Trojans.

In each of Lincoln Riley’s four seasons at the helm here, he’s trotted out impressive offenses and unimpressive defenses and — surprise, surprise — gotten the same result each time: something short of the College Football Playoff.

Riley’s teams have averaged more yards per play in his tenure than any other team in the nation.

But it hasn’t mattered much, because the best that a USC team has ranked defensively in that span was last year, when the Trojans gave up 23 points per game — 51st in the nation. That left them 9-4 after losing to Texas Christian in the Alamo Bowl.

Now we’ll find out whether in Season 5, Riley’s Trojans have a defense on par with the offense.

Whether this season, with Gary Patterson serving as USC’s third defensive coordinator in Riley’s tenure, will be different.

They said so leading up to Saturday’s season-opening 42-26 victory over San José State, but the game certainly didn’t sell anyone on it.

No, USC’s win over a Spartans team that’s incorporating 48 new players isn’t going to definitively tell us anything.

But with Patterson on the USC sideline for the first time, gesticulating and sweating in the coaches’ all-black attire, it did drop some concerning clues.

In 90-plus-degree heat, that ’fit was questionable. So too was his defense, at times.

In other moments, reasons for optimism: The Trojans pitched a first-half shutout. There was the play in which freshman defensive end Luke Wafle ran through two Spartans blockers like a hot knife through butter. Linebackers coach Mike Ekeler’s guys hit and hit hard.

Junior defensive tackle Jide Abasiri had four tackles, two for loss — including one that’s the kind of play Riley has been dreaming of seeing from his defense: On fourth and one at USC’s seven-yard line, Abasiri zipped past a pair of blockers and swallowed up running back Jabari Smith.

“The fourth-down stop in the red zone, that’s something that we have spent a lot of time talking about,” Riley said. “Red-zone defense and how that equates. If you look at the top teams in the country over the last several years, typically the top red-zone defenses equal out with that; like, it’s the same teams.”

But the Trojans otherwise did not perform like one of those “top teams.”

They took their proverbial foot off the gas, ran out of gas, sputtered to the finish line, got outscored 23-7 in the fourth quarter and looked like anything but a team with serious playoff plans.

They looked thin. And, mostly, like a typical Riley-era Trojans team.

The second-string secondary triggered second thoughts. Trojan safeties were beaten multiple times, including on a 28-yard pass from Spartans quarterback Luke Weaver to Jerry McClure over freshman Madden Riordan, which made it 35-9 with 14:56 to play in the fourth quarter.

And maybe it was the focus-sapping heat, but USC’s defense wasn’t as stifling, not as suffocating it should have been against an opponent as hopelessly overmatched as San José State.

The Spartans finished with 336 total yards. Weaver looked increasingly comfortable, with more time to operate than he should’ve had against a defense that’s going to be needed to keep top teams like Oregon, Washington, Ohio State and Indiana in check.

The Spartans’ new starter went 21 for 32 for 234 yards — including 74 yards in the fourth quarter.

“It took a little bit to settle in, but I’m really proud of just the resolve of our team,” Weaver said.

The Spartans should be proud, and the Trojans should be ashamed.

“The fourth quarter was not up to our standards,” Riley said. “Obviously, we played a bunch of different guys, a lot of guys got opportunities and we had several that did not play the way that we anticipated. There’ll be a lot to learn and grow from it because we’re going to need the depth.

“We challenged that in the fourth quarter and obviously didn’t respond the way we wanted.”

It leaves teaching moments aplenty for Patterson, who took three years off after his two-decade Texas Christian tenure ended in 2021.

The Hall of Fame coach is taking over for D’Anton Lynn, who bolted for his alma mater Penn State after two meh seasons. Lynn replaced Alex Grinch, who was fired before finishing his second season leading a defense that was porous and poor, ranking as the 94th and 121st most generous defense in the nation in 2022 and ’23, respectively.

Patterson brought his 4-2-5 defensive scheme. And his energy and experience, as well as his track record — five times his Horned Frogs had the nation’s No. 10-ranked defense.

Now if USC has any hope of making the playoff under Riley, it needs its defense to at least be among the best in the country.

It needs to answer the question: How can a team expect to be complimented if it can’t play complementary football?

It can’t.