USC head coach Lincoln Riley returned to practice Wednesday after missing the previous two days of practice this week with pneumonia. Outside wide receivers coach Dennis Simmons, who has been with Lincoln Riley since his Oklahoma days dating back to 2015, took on head coaching duties for the previous two days of practice.
“Yea, it obviously felt different from when your head man isn’t here,” junior quarterback Caleb Williams said on the recent absence of his head coach.
However, according to Williams, Riley has built a program with a “next man up” mentality, making it feel like any other practice whether he is present or not.
While Riley was not an active participant at practice over the last two days, he made sure to stay in communication with the team.
“Our communication was still the same, calling each other after practice, talking about plays,” Williams said.
After last week’s loss to Utah, the Trojans now find themselves in uncharted waters. For the first time since Riley joined the program last summer, the Trojans have lost back-to-back games. Entering the season at No. 6, USC now finds themselves just on the edge of the AP Top 25 poll, sitting at No. 24 this week.
For the players on the team, they are not paying attention to the outside noise.
“People are going to have opinions, we just have to stay together,” redshirt senior wide receiver Tahj Washington said. “Being together, that’s what it is really about, you got to bounce back from losses like that.”
The team still has full confidence moving forward as it enters the last quarter of the season.
“Every game, we know as an offense [that] we should go out there and dominate the opponent,” senior receiver Brenden Rice said.
USC’s offense still ranks in the top half of the country, as it is 11th in yards per game (481.1) and third in points per game (45.4). Yet after the loss to Utah, where the offense was stagnant at times, players took accountability for the sluggish performance at times on Saturday.
“When the defense gets those couple stops, we have to attack the moment and get in the endzone … and I am going to put that one on us,” Rice said.
Williams echoed Rice’s sentiment: “When we get our shots, we have to take advantage of them.”
Even with a 6-2 record, anything can still happen with a handful of games still left to play. USC has an opportunity to get back on track with upcoming games against ranked opponents No. 5 Washington, No. 9 Oregon and No. 23 UCLA.
“We are halfway through the season, you don’t necessarily know what’s going to happen,” Williams said. “We have seen a lot of ranked teams lose in a lot of close games.”
USC football will be back this Saturday at 1 p.m. as it travels up north to take on the Cal Golden Bears. The game will be broadcast on Pac-12 Network.