The USC Trojans did it … but what they did wasn’t right in any way. The men of Troy wasted a golden opportunity for an undefeated season and a Pac-12 title. They played their most error-prone and error-prone game of the season. The Trojans blew game after game, chance after chance, sequence after series. They made one mental mistake after another on Friday night. It’s as if nothing has changed all year. Not much went well on Friday night against Oregon in the Pac-12 Championship Game, so instead of the usual studs and duds, let’s be honest and look at the many duds of this loss.
Let’s see where it all went wrong.
Duds
Clay Helton
He had the opportunity to do something remarkable; instead, Clay Helton coached his team the way he did every other week, that is, on a mediocre level. The Trojans looked as poor as they did almost every other week, except in the second half against Utah and the first half against Washington state. The team looked mentally unfit. The Trojans consistently ran their own way. They committed penalty after penalty without regard to the fact that players hurt their teammates in the process. When the team’s head coach got the chance to get his squad ready for a conference title and a New Year’s Six bowl, he instead oversaw one of the poorest outings of the season. It’s a shame USC probably won’t learn from this game or this season, instead taking advantage of the fact that it just fell short – just one score – to justify its continued ignorance of blatant mistakes.
Kedon Slovis
The USC quarterback played well in the previous fourth quarters this season, but as a whole, he didn’t play particularly well this year. The reason USC had to get behind so often is that Slovis consistently puts the Trojans in bad situations. Slovis’ mistakes Friday night led to 14 Oregon points and the final revenue of the Pac-12 Championship Game. He looked shaky all night and the mechanics were gone. After making several mistakes, he played scared for the rest of the game. This was the wrong game for Slovis to play so badly. He ended up throwing an interception in the fourth quarter, something he hadn’t (but almost did) in previous games. His luck, like Clay Helton’s, ran up.
Clock management
This team doesn’t understand basic clock management or time-out management. That the Trojans had to burn after a timeout at 4 and 20 is ridiculous. At that point, the team should have simply taken the penalty instead of wasting the precious good. It’s hard to understand what Clay Helton sometimes thinks or how USC becomes so mentally vulnerable in situations where basic awareness could mean the difference between a touchdown and a failed down.