USC gives Lincoln Riley a vote of confidence for 2025 football season

Lincoln Riley finished his third season as USC football coach with his head just above water at 7-6, but as the program’s win total has declined over that time, there are some nagging questions about the Trojans’ trajectory under Riley’s leadership in 2025 and beyond.

Questions that USC athletic director Jen Cohen appears to have answered for now, giving Riley an important vote of confidence heading into the fall.

That confidence from Riley’s superior stems from the coach’s history of building winners and the assistants he has around him to help put the Trojans back on top.

“Lincoln has the experience, right?” Cohen said to The Los Angeles Times. “He’s built and led championship teams before.

“So my focus with him is just investing and giving him, and not just him, but his entire coaching staff, his support staff that he has around him, every resource possible to get to the next level.”

But over the last two years, Riley has lost 11 games, matching the number of victories he had during his first season, when the Trojans went to a New Year’s Six bowl game and quarterback Caleb Williams won the Heisman Trophy.

And it’s nowhere near the expectation that USC has on the football field.

Much of the concern has arisen from a notoriously generous defense, especially over Riley’s first two seasons at the helm, but the addition of D’Anton Lynn as defensive coordinator in place of Alex Grinch has so far helped improve the Trojans’ play on that side of the ball.

But the departure of Williams has hampered the team’s consistency on offense, which also just lost wide receiver Zachariah Branch, who transferred to Georgia this offseason.

Miller Moss, who succeeded Williams at quarterback, also left the program, landing at Louisville.

Husan Longstreet, a five-star prospect at quarterback, was an important acquisition for the Trojans to build around at the position.

Still, the Trojans are in a position to stay a winner, especially after joining the Big Ten in one of college football’s most consequential realignment moves.

“What I can say is that USC is a special place and that we’re aligned and we’re resourced in a way to compete in what is a very evolving and changing landscape,” Cohen said.

“And that we as a department, him as a coach, me as an AD, us as a university, we have to keep adapting to that. I feel like we just have to go execute. We have to go execute.

“And I feel really confident in the resources that we’ve put into this program. We know we can do it here because it’s been done here before. I’m just ready for spring ball to start to see some of these new faces we have.”

(LA Times)

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