USC Trojans: This Can’t Be Real Defense

The USC Trojans’ defense looked awful against their rival Stanford, hopefully it improves before going to Arizona State this Saturday.

This defense made Kevin Hogan look like the second coming of Andrew Luck.

I was disgusted looking at Hogan complete pass after pass on numerous third downs late in the 4th quarter.

The pass rush did not exist.

Stanford’s run game gashed USC as well. They had a total of 195 rushing yards, and that’s not Trojan football that I remember.

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It seems like USC tend to always lose these big games at home to teams they should beat.

Things will not get any easier. Arizona State is a really good offensive team that USC had problems with a year ago. Yea we all remember that hail-mary pass.

It’s just so frustrating seeing the USC defense struggle time after time again.

Offensively, I am impressed with the play of Cody Kessler up to this point.

He went 25-32 for 273 yards and three touchdowns against a good Stanford defense.

The offense played well enough to win. Heck scoring 31 points on Stanford should be good enough to win a hundred percent of the time.

Furthermore, the offensive game plan was very balanced but I will like to see more touches for Tre Madden.

Madden ran the ball 9 times for 64 yards. That’s about 7 yards per carry. But, once again the offense did enough to win the game it’s the defensive struggles that have been this teams achilles heel the last few years.

I would like to see a stout physical defense from USC this Saturday.

The talent is there — victory hasn’t been.

Su’a Cravens is a great player,  along with Adoree Jackson, freshman linebacker Cameron Smith and many more individual stars.

Getting pressure on the quarterback would also be nice this Saturday at Arizona State.

Without pressuring the quarterback, USC will have little to no chance forcing turnovers and potentially making game changing plays.

The Pac-12 is a great competitive conference.

Personally, I think it’s the best conference in all of college football.

The only way to win this conference is to play great defense and score on offense.

A few teams do just that.

On the other hand that’s where USC is lacking and that’s why the last few years USC has not had a multiple 10 win season even with the coaching change.

Nevertheless, this defense has to improve going forward.

They have to create more turnovers, get key stops on 3rd downs and overall they just need to stop looking lost out there.

With that being said, I am not too worried about the defense.

They will improve.

Stanford was just the first test and it doesn’t get any easier when I look at the schedule.

They are on the road against multiple ranked teams this season including Oregon, Notre Dame and Cal.

Bottom Line: USC’s defense needs to change or it could spoil 2015.

They have a few more tough home games as well for example, Arizona, Utah, and UCLA.

All ranked opponents.

The PAC-12 is wide open for any team to come in and take the crown from Oregon and hopefully USC is that team.