Steve Sarkisian arrived at USC last December with an implicit mandate to re-create the recent past that had existed under his old L.A. boss, Pete Carroll. And in at least one sense, Sark is off to a precocious start. But the timeline the no. 9 Trojans revisited in Saturday night’s 37-31 flop at Boston College felt a little too recent, and all too familiar.
After all, it was only five years ago that Sarkisian oversaw a monumental, 16-13 upset over his former team in just his third game as Washington’s head coach, the first sign the balance of power on the West Coast was about to undergo a radical shift. At that point, USC was chasing its eighth consecutive conference championship, while Washington was pursuing its first conference win since November 2007. Only a week removed from an uplifting, come-from-behind victory at Ohio State, the mighty Trojans rolled into Seattle as 21-point favorites, but left with the first crack in their previously invincible facade. By the following January, USC had ceded Pac-10 supremacy to Oregon, Carroll had bailed for the NFL, major NCAA sanctions loomed, and the halcyon days were officially, emphatically over.
On Saturday, only a week removed from an uplifting, come-from-behind victory at Stanford, the Trojans rolled into Chestnut Hill as 17-point favorites. In just Sarkisian’s third game as head coach, USC was once again basking in top-10 rankings in both major polls and looking forward to its first serious run at the conference crown since Sark’s days as an assistant. Meanwhile, based on last week’s 30-20 loss to Pittsburgh, Boston College looked bound for little more than a cameo role as a speed bump in 2014.
The Eagles were barely even that against Pitt, yielding 303 yards rushing (including 214 yards to the Panthers’ mammoth tailback, James Conner) while managing just 142 ground yards of their own (and just 91 prior to a handful of late scrambles by quarterback Tyler Murphy against a prevent defense on BC’s penultimate offensive series). BC entered the season with no recognizable playmakers and no discernible identity absent 2013 Heisman finalist Andre Williams, and limped into Saturday night’s game with no answers in sight.
In that context, there’s not much use attempting to make sense of the final numbers against USC, although there was nothing remotely misleading about them. Including negative yardage on sacks, Boston College outrushed USC by more than 400 yards, averaging an astounding 8.4 yards per carry to the Trojans’ equally astounding 0.7. The Eagles ripped off eight runs covering at least 20 yards, five of them by Murphy; the Trojans’ longest carry of the night went for 16 yards. In contrast to the straight-ahead, power-oriented attack that lifted Williams from obscurity last year, BC unleashed a much slipperier read-option scheme on the USC defense, and found itself springing runners into the open field again, and again, and again.
While the USC defense was busy looking outwitted and unprepared for the possibility that the opposing quarterback might keep the ball, the offense was busy doing, well, nothing: After scoring on three consecutive possessions in the first and second quarters (all three of which began in BC territory), the Trojans proceeded to punt on eight straight possessions, failing to earn a first down on four of them. A pair of late touchdowns on the arm of quarterback Cody Kessler made the final score look respectable — at least to the extent that a six-point loss to a 17-point underdog can be considered “respectable” — but after its first possession of the second half, when the score was still just 20-17, USC didn’t touch the ball again with a chance to regain the lead.
In the broader context, though, the result makes perfect sense as the latest in an exceedingly long and incontrovertible line of reminders that, as tempting as it may be to imagine them fulfilling their blue-chip pedigree, the Trojans still cannot be trusted with the keys to their old penthouse in the Pac-12 and the national polls. The allure is obvious: Man for man, USC remains the gold standard for raw talent in the conference, or anywhere west of the Mississippi, and every victory over a quality opponent feels like a glimpse into a room without a fixed ceiling.
The 2014 edition, in particular, is blessed with the requisite star power on both sides of the ball — Kessler, Buck Allen, and Nelson Agholor on offense; Leonard Williams and Hayes Pullard on defense — and is no longer burdened by NCAA sanctions or the disgruntled specter of Lane Kiffin. The Trojans commenced the Sarkisian era by napalming Fresno State to the tune of 52 points on 701 yards of total offense, and followed that promising debut by outslugging the defending conference champs in Stanford. Someday, USC really is going to get back to winning championships, and probably someday soon. Why not this team? Why not now?
Saturday, the answer came right on cue. Maddening volatility was the prevailing theme of the Kiffin era, which was notable mainly for producing, in 2012, the most spectacular failure on record by a team ranked no. 1 in the preseason AP poll. But the trend preceded Kiffin’s arrival, as the senseless flop at Washington in 2009 showed, and now it has persisted beyond his doomed administration as well. The stumble on Saturday was USC’s 12th defeat at the hands of an unranked opponent in the last five years, and the ninth in which the Trojans themselves were ranked.
Remember that Kiffin, like Sarkisian, was hired in a transparent attempt to extend the Carroll dynasty, despite neither of the former understudies having won much of anything in their previous stops as head coach. Because their public personae are so wildly different, the similarities between the former colleagues seemed to end there. In reality, though, USC fans may be realizing that their new coach has more in common with the old one than anyone realized — or, worse, exactly as much as everyone feared.
