How USC responds after its first loss of the season will determine if this year’s Trojans team is College Football Playoff caliber or not.
Good teams like USC will lose games, but great ones will find ways to learn from them and leave no stone unturned.
It was bound to happen at some point. Did you really think Lincoln Riley was going to run the gauntlet to perfection in his first season at the helm? Losing on the road to reigning Pac-12 champion Utah is not the end of the world. What will be though is if the Trojans drag their feet against Jedd Fisch’s mediocre Arizona Wildcats coming out of their bye week. That cannot happen.
How USC responds after its first loss of the season will tell us everything about the 2022 Trojans.
USC can make the College Football Playoff if the Trojans win out in epic fashion
Although crashing the College Football Playoff is not entirely in their control at this point, USC has to understand that for the Trojans to make the party, they have to be more than just one-loss Pac-12 champions. While the Selection Committee could give them the benefit of the doubt for brand reasons, USC has to look dominant over its next five regular-season games to have a realistic shot.
This is because three of the Trojans’ final four Pac-12 games do not move the needle. Even if they beat Arizona in Tucson, Cal at home and Colorado at home, nobody is going to care unless they win those games convincingly heading into the huge rivalry game at the Rose Bowl vs. UCLA. While the Bruins could fade down the stretch, Chip Kelly’s team has helped make the Pac-12 look stronger.
Even with a win at home over Notre Dame to get to 11-1 (8-1), USC probably needs UCLA to be a 10-2 team with their only losses to the Trojans and the Oregon Ducks to be in a great position to make the playoff. The best option would be to face a one-loss Oregon team in Las Vegas for all the marbles. The winner of that Pac-12 Championship game would almost certainly make the playoff.
I mean, that scenario could happen, but it is not entirely within USC’s control. What is firmly in the Trojans’ control is beating the brakes off every team they play the rest of the way. How would the Selection Committee keep a one-loss, Pac-12 champion USC team out when their lone loss was on the road to the previous Pac-12 champion Utah at their place in Salt Lake City? They would not.
Ultimately, USC needs to play like it will not get the benefit of the doubt to possibly get the benefit of the doubt. Keep in mind that there is at least one undefeated team in the other four Power Five conferences. Georgia and Tennessee, as well as Michigan and Ohio State, still have to play each other. However, there is a bad scenario where even a one-loss Pac-12 champion does not get in…
USC is so fortunate that the Pac-12 is having one of its better all-around seasons in several years.
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