Lincoln Riley Was 1-6 Against Top-Six Teams. He Just Beat No. 2 Ohio State 30-18.
USC was unranked. Ohio State was No. 2 in the country. Lincoln Riley had gone 1-6 against AP top-six teams in his career, and his only win in that group came in 2017, in his second game as a head coach at Oklahoma, against Ohio State.
Saturday night at the Coliseum, he got the second one. USC 30, Ohio State 18, in front of 70,810 people who stormed the field afterward.
USC Won Without the Ball
Ohio State outgained USC by 126 yards, 464 to 338. The Buckeyes held the ball for 39:28, nearly 19 minutes longer than USC. They picked up 25 first downs to USC’s 15.
And they did not score a touchdown until 2:12 remained in the fourth quarter.
USC’s defense stopped Ohio State on four of five red-zone trips and kept the Buckeyes out of the end zone for roughly 57 minutes. Connor Hawkins went 4-for-4 on field goals, which is another way of saying Ohio State stalled four separate times inside scoring range.
The Trojans scored on four of their first six drives and went 4-for-4 in the red zone themselves. Jayden Maiava threw for 222 yards on 15-of-23 passing with a touchdown and no interceptions. Thirty-nine seconds into the game, on USC’s second snap, he hit Trent Mosley for a 69-yard score.
The Freshman Had No Chance
Ohio State started true freshman Luke Fahey in his first career game as a starter, with Julian Sayin out after a shoulder injury at Indiana on Oct. 17. Fahey was respectable: 21-of-38, 260 yards, a touchdown, no interceptions. Jeremiah Smith caught 10 passes and his 40th career touchdown, a Big Ten record.
What buried the Buckeyes was 11 penalties for 71 yards and a third-quarter Isaiah West fumble that USC converted into a 70-yard Mark Bowman catch and a King Miller touchdown run.
“There were just way too many mistakes, and we all gotta recognize why that is and get it fixed,” Ryan Day said.
Then Riley Pulled Out a Piece of Paper
This is where the night turned odd. A USC staffer moved to end the press conference. Riley cut him off, produced a sheet of paper and read a prepared closing statement.
“I just took a second. I wanted to make sure to articulate my thoughts,” he said. “This program is built on internal joy, not external applause.”
Then the line everyone heard: “I said before this game that I’m the right person for this job. And as long as all those people know that, that’s all I care about.”
Riley is 42-20 in five seasons at USC and has never taken the program to the College Football Playoff. The Trojans lost 41-27 at home to Oregon on Sept. 26 and 24-7 at Wisconsin on Oct. 24, a game ESPN called the worst offensive performance of his tenure, and the job speculation has not quieted since.
Beating the second-ranked team in America by 12 should have been the entire answer. Riley decided it needed a footnote, which tells you how loud the last five weeks have been inside his own head.
What It Actually Changes
USC is 7-2, 4-2 in the Big Ten, and back in the playoff conversation. The schedule does not soften: a bye, then at No. 4 Indiana on Nov. 14, Maryland on Nov. 21, and at No. 7 UCLA on Nov. 28. Run that table and the Trojans would own three wins over ranked teams and a serious at-large case, something the program has never held under this format.
Ohio State is 6-2 with a freshman quarterback and Oregon, Northwestern, Nebraska and Michigan still to come. A third loss probably ends it. The first playoff committee rankings arrive Tuesday night, and for the first time in Day’s tenure the Buckeyes are the ones who need them to break right.
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.
