Gary Patterson Is Returning to the Sideline at USC. The Trojans Just Made Their Best Hire of the Year.
USC made the most important hire of the offseason, and Lincoln Riley is hoping it saves his job.
Gary Patterson is returning to the sideline as USC’s defensive coordinator after four seasons away from coaching. The Trojans landed one of the most respected defensive minds in college football history, and the timing could not be more important for a program that has had defensive struggles every year under Riley.
This is the hire USC has needed for three years. Riley’s offensive brilliance has never been the issue. The Trojans have scored points every season. They have produced NFL quarterbacks. They have moved the ball against good defenses. The problem has always been giving up too many points on the other side of the ball, and Patterson is the most overqualified candidate any program could have hired to fix that.
Patterson spent 21 seasons at TCU as the head coach. He won a Rose Bowl. He turned an off-the-map Mountain West program into a Big 12 power and a College Football Playoff contender. He produced NFL talent. He coached his defenses to play with the kind of physicality and discipline that became a TCU trademark. He is one of the great college football coaches of the last 25 years, and now he is going to run the defense for a USC team that has talent but no identity on that side of the ball.
The talent gap was never the issue at USC. Riley has recruited well. The Trojans have had four-star and five-star defensive players at every level of the roster. They have just not coached them up to play winning football. The system has been inconsistent. The discipline has been lacking. The intensity has come and gone depending on the matchup.
Patterson does not lose those battles. His defenses always show up to play. They always tackle. They always understand their assignments. That kind of consistency is the difference between a defense that gives up 35 points to Oregon and a defense that holds Oregon to 21. USC has had the former for too long. They need the latter to compete for a Big Ten title.
The Big Ten is also a different beast than the Pac-12 was. Patterson is going to face Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State, and Oregon over the next few years. Those are programs with elite quarterbacks, elite offensive lines, and elite skill players. He is going to have to build a defense that can stop modern offenses while also dealing with the physical Big Ten style that is different from anything the Pac-12 ever offered.
Patterson has experience with this. His TCU defenses played both pro-style offenses and spread offenses. He recruited the kind of versatile defenders who could match up with any system. He has the body of work to know how to construct a defense for any matchup, and now he just needs to install it at USC quickly enough to make a difference next season.
The hot seat for Riley is real. The Trojans have not won a Big Ten title. They have not gotten the program back to where it was in the Carroll era. The booster pressure has been growing each year, and another disappointing season could push the Riley experiment in a different direction.
That is the context Patterson is walking into. He has been hired to fix the part of the team that has held Riley back. If he succeeds, the Trojans become a real contender. If he fails, the entire program could be reconsidered.
The early indicators are positive. Patterson has not coached in four years, but he has stayed close to the game. He knows the modern offensive trends. He understands the player development needs of the current college landscape. He has the credibility to recruit defensive players who want to play for a real coach.
USC just got serious about defense. The rest of the Big Ten should be paying attention.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
