USC’s red-zone offense is in need of a jolt

LOS ANGELES — The rivalry, slowly, was melting into a vat of sheer offensive sludge. Dreams of reclaiming the Victory Bell, on a cool Saturday night in Pasadena, were on their last gasp by the fourth quarter. On the sidelines, underneath his headset, USC coach Lincoln Riley sensed his program needed a spark.

So on a second down, trailing by four with eight minutes left against UCLA, Riley called a play they had repped in practice only a couple of times.

Quarterback Jayden Maiava whizzed a lateral over to sophomore receiver Makai Lemon, blockers setting up in front of him like a screen. Except receiver Kyron Hudson faked a quick route, breaking downfield on a go route. And Lemon reared back – he had somehow thrown this pass better in practice, Hudson insisted postgame – and fired a 36-yard dart to a wide-open Hudson to set up a game-clinching touchdown.

It was the kind of brilliance that single-handedly shifted momentum at the Rose Bowl, defining the latest chapter of this cross-town rivalry. It was the kind of brilliance that had formed Riley’s reputation, as a young offensive savant and play-caller dating to his time at Oklahoma.

It was also the kind of brilliance missing, almost entirely, from USC’s offense for much of the night – a unit that completely stagnated in the red zone.

The Trojans won 19-13, yes. But they could have blown the game open. In the second quarter, Maiava took two second- and third-down end zone shots from the 6-yard line before USC settled for a field goal. A drive later, Maiava took two second- and third-down end zone shots from the 5-yard line before USC settled for a field goal. He finished the night 1 for 8 in the red zone, the only completion and USC’s only touchdown coming on the fourth-quarter go-ahead score that capped the Lemon-to-Hudson drive.

Can’t win with field goals, as Maiava muttered Tuesday.

“Definitely, myself,” Maiava said, when asked what he pinned the red-zone struggles on. “Being able to get a relationship with everybody, and making the next-right decision.”

Offensive execution in key spots, though, has been an issue for USC’s program all season, long before Maiava took the reins two games ago. These Trojans, still, rank in the top third of the country in red-zone touchdown conversion rate at 67%. But that’s the lowest mark of any Riley program in his time as a head coach.

USC (6-5 overall, 4-5 Big Ten) ran the ball just five times against nine pass attempts on plays inside UCLA’s 20-yard-line on Saturday, with star back Woody Marks all but neglected on a couple of drives. Still, on Tuesday, Riley pointed to just one play he called – a moment when he felt he could have better taken advantage of a mis-aligned UCLA defense – as one he would have liked to have back.

“Everything else was, I mean, kinda there,” Riley said. “We just didn’t, you know, we didn’t make plays. And so, that’s on us, too.”

“I mean, shoot, we all own in it,” Riley continued. “The calls, the coaching, the execution, we all own in it. We had some opportunities to make ’em, but we gotta make ’em.”

Riley, on Tuesday, also pointed to the strength of the Big Ten defenses USC has faced this season as an explanation in part for their red-zone execution. And as fate would have it, they will face arguably their toughest unit yet to wrap up a rocky regular-season slate: Notre Dame (10-1), currently tied with Penn State and a couple of other programs for the 11th-best red-zone defense in the country.

It’s altogether unlikely, though, that Riley will alter his play-calling from inside the 20-yard-line much come Saturday. And Maiava made clear on Tuesday, asked about USC’s red-zone efficiency: he trusts his receivers in one-on-one matchups.

“I’m gonna keep throwing the ball to them, and throwing the rock, and I told them this,” Maiava said. “They know it.”