I'm hoping that USC is really being overrated by the analysts this year, trying to compensate for the fact that the Trojans were given much positive attention last year, with the sanctions. USC came out and played sharp football and surprised a lot of people.
That being said, many Irish fans went from being fairly confident that we could handle USC to being terrified of getting thrashed by them this year. I'll admit that they have some superior talent compared to us, but they don't really have anything they didn't have last year. They did outplay the Irish, but we also shot ourselves in the foot a good bit. If ND tightens up and is rolling hard with solid wins going into the last week the Irish can certainly give Kiffin and company a hard time of it.
The thing they have that they didn't have last year is pretty much everybody back and a year older (which usually means better). That's huge. They lost their FB and their LT (admittedly a big loss), but everyone else returns to that offense, plus super-recruit Nelson and Agholar, and oh yeah, Silas Redd. That offense is going to be damn-near impossible to stop. Plus we had them at home last year, and this year we go to their place. But like I've been saying...we get them at the end of the season, which is a huge benefit to us.
*** On a side note, they lost (on top of CB Wiley who most likely will be gone) another CB in Torin Harris who got what looked like a really bad hammy pull in yesterday's practice. And like I knew would happen, in Kiffy's first day available to hit, the back-ups and freshmen got most of the time in the scrimmage at the Coliseum. I'm telling you, Kiffy and his staff are scared to death of injuries (they've already got a bunch of guys out w probably minor stuff). When this happened two years ago and they stopped hitting in practice b/c they were scared of injuries, their defense played like crap pretty much the entire year and they lost 5 games.
And their back-ups played like crap yesterday (but then again, in our first media viewing session, the defense was way ahead of the offense too. That's what happens this early in camp...)
ESPN150 just committed. 
