Lincoln Riley Might Be An All-Time Fraud

Well, USC finally had to play someone with a pulse and as you may have expected if you've watched the Trojans play defense at all this season, they got throttled. Just completely dismantled in every facet of the game by a Notre Dame team that, while talented, was reeling and had lost two of its last three.

If there's a silver lining for Lincoln Riley, though, after USC took an all but fatal blow to its College Football Playoff chances, it's that he should be used to squandering great opportunities to win a national championship at this point. He made the College Football Playoff three times at Oklahoma and never made it to a national title game. And barring something incredibly unforeseen, he likely won't even make a CFP in either of Caleb Williams's seasons at USC. Nobody in college football does less with more.

Riley should have known coming into this year the Trojans' defense was still going to be awful and did seemingly nothing to correct it. Williams seems to have taken a pretty big step back — it would have been difficult to top what he was able to do last season, but still. USC blew a golden opportunity to play for a national championship last year and Riley let the team get worse.

The good news is the Trojans still have Utah, Washington, Oregon and UCLA left on their schedule, so they might go ahead and lose four or five games and get all the regression out of the way this season. Nowhere to go but up!