USC fans rejoiced when defensive coordinator Alex Grinch was fired midway through the 2023 season. His replacement, D’Anton Lynn — poached from crosstown rival UCLA — promised a new, more normal approach for the upcoming season.
When asked of his top priorities defensively, Lynn simply said “stopping the run and affecting the quarterback.”
That may seem like a boring answer, but it marks a shift from the Grinch era, who focused more on forcing turnovers than working on the fundamentals.
“We don’t look at takeaways defensively as being the extra,” Grinch told reporters ahead of the 2022 season, his first with USC. “We look at that as the sole purpose why we take the field.”
That worked, to an extent, in his first year with the Trojans. Grinch’s group forced the ninth-most turnovers in the FBS. It only resulted in the No. 94 scoring defense, but it gave the Trojan offense good field position on route to an 11-3 record and NY6 Bowl berth. There was room to grow, but also a potential proof of concept.
In 2023, however, the wheels fell off. Turnover production regressed, with USC generating the 27th-fewest turnovers in college football. That drop in turnovers coincided with a jump in points allowed — to more than 34, the thirteenth most in the country. The Trojans dropped to an 8-5 record.
While his goals were not the most specific, Lynn did give some indications as to what his defense would look like.
Lynn comes from the dual-Harbaugh tree of defensive coordinating. In 2021, Jim Harbaugh’s Michigan poached safeties coach Mike MacDonald from John Harbaugh’s Baltimore Ravens to run the Wolverines’ defense. The next year, MacDonald returned to the Ravens, but Michigan kept a similar system in place with new DC Jesse Minter who had also worked under John Harbaugh already.
The system has been highly successful. Michigan made the playoffs in MacDonald’s one year with the team and won the national championship under Minter, who has since followed Jim Harbaugh to the Los Angeles Chargers. MacDonald’s system worked well enough in Baltimore that he became Pete Carroll’s successor as head coach of the Seattle Seahawks. Lynn has already shown that his version of the system is successful, elevating UCLA’s defense from 42nd worst to 14th best.
“The scheme has enough flexibility in it that, in my opinion, when I watch people who come from this scheme, it looks like we all run different schemes,” Lynn said. “When I watched Michigan last year, it doesn’t look like UCLA. When I watch some Baltimore stuff, that looks different than Michigan and I’m sure Seattle’s stuff is gonna look real different. So everyone kind of has their own twist on it.”
What does that scheme entail? Lynn discussed his desire to throw the kitchen sink at the quarterback.
“We’d like to blitz. We play aggressive, we call the game aggressive,” Lynn said. “We’re just going to do it no matter what.”
New defensive backs coach Doug Belk sounded excited at that prospect.
“It all starts with the quarterback and as much as we can affect the quarterback on a down in and down [out] basis,” Belk said. “Whether it’s blitzes and disguises or playing coverage, that gives us in the secondary a greater chance to be successful.”
Although blitzing takes players out of coverage, Belk expressed that the trade-offs — that the ball has to come out sooner and the offense’s route tree is therefore less diverse — more than made up for that negative.
It’s not just the scheme that’s changing. Only defensive line coach Shaun Nua returned from last year’s staff, serving as co-interim defensive coordinator after Grinch’s firing.
The new-look Trojan defensive staff has a wide range of experience.
New linebackers coach Matt Entz went 60-11 as the head coach at North Dakota State in the FCS, winning two national championships in four years. Belk was the defensive coordinator at Houston for three years before coming to USC. Defensive line coach Eric Henderson held the same position with the Rams, also serving as the run game coordinator.
“I’m an information guy. I want information from as many places as I can get it. Whether that’s a former head coach like Entz or whether that’s a [graduate assistant],” Lynn said. “I think good ideas come from everywhere and if you want to grow as a coach, you can’t block yourself off the ideas from other people”
Belk echoed the value of the experience in the defensive coaching room.
“Being able to learn from a bunch of veteran guys like coach Entz, who’s been a coordinator and a head coach, coach [Henderson] who’s been in the NFL for a long time, coach Nua, who’s been at a lot of different college stops and, ultimately, coach Lynn,” Belk said. “It’s helping me grow as it’s helping our players grow.”
There’s room for USC’s defense to improve on last year’s performance. It will face a tough first challenge, though, when the Trojans open the season against No. 13 LSU in Las Vegas on September 1.