Beginning in late November 2021, when then-Oklahoma head coach Lincoln Riley jumped ship to Los Angeles to become USC’s head coach, the Trojans have operated under various themes to help explain why their rebuild always seems to unfold at such a leisurely pace.
The various talking points throughout Riley’s high-priced, pressure-packed tenure have looked something like this:
- An immediate need to overhaul the roster that felt perpetually enveloped by scandal from the middle of former coach Pete Carroll’s dynasty in 2006 through the firing of successors Lane Kiffin and Steve Sarkisian
- An overreliance on the transfer portal to force a national championship run with star quarterback Caleb Williams
- A reconfigured recruiting style in favor of a much-maligned, nationwide approach
- The plucking of defensive coordinator D’Anton Lynn from crosstown rival UCLA as a means of finally fixing USC’s most glaring on-field flaw
As the Riley era enters its fifth season in L.A., and with the Trojans having failed to reach double-digit wins since he took over in 2022, many of these points have produced equal and opposite reactions.
Gary Patterson and Lincoln Riley at an introductory press conference in January. (Photo by Kirby Lee/Getty Images)
The early roster construction missteps prompted Riley to hire Notre Dame general manager Chad Bowden for the same role at USC, whose pivot back toward local recruiting secured the No. 1 high school class in the country.
The culture that Riley said desperately needed fixing is now anchored by the Bloom Football Performance Center, a $225 million facility that opened over the summer. And when Lynn left USC to become defensive coordinator at Penn State, his alma mater, Riley responded with the splashy addition of former TCU head coach Gary Patterson, an inductee to the College Football Hall of Fame.
“When I think about our football program right now going into this fifth year, going into this season, I think about our alignment and the momentum behind our program,” Riley said at Big Ten media days last month.
“Kind of watching us through the last few years taking on some of the different challenges and changes that we’ve had — a new coaching staff, a new president, a new AD, a new conference, most recently moving into the [new] facility about 10 days ago — we’ve had so much change. Right now, I feel like our alignment is as strong as it’s ever been.”
From an Xs and Os perspective, the burgeoning football alignment revolves largely around what Riley believes will be his most successful defensive coordinator hire yet — an ideal complement to the Trojans’ high-flying offense.
Patterson, 66, came out of retirement in January to chase one of the few things his uniquely impressive résumé is still missing: a national championship. To get there would require USC to reach the College Football Playoff for the first time in program history, which might also be the minimum for Riley to keep his job beyond this season.
A decades-long track record compiled by Patterson is more than enough to inspire legitimate confidence. The two-time Big 12 coach of the year won 181 games with a .696 winning percentage in 21 seasons as the Horned Frogs’ head coach from 2000-21. The winning stretch also won him six conference championships across Conference USA, the Mountain West and the Big 12. His squads finished among the top nine in the final AP Poll six times from 2008-17 alone, which also included an undefeated season in 2010 by upending No. 4 Wisconsin in the Rose Bowl.
More specifically, Patterson’s previous defensive exploits offer the excitement that radiated from Riley to the trio of players he brought to Chicago for Big Ten media days. Star quarterback Jayden Maiava described “Coach GP” as a “great addition.”
TCU led the nation in total defense five times during Patterson’s tenure as head coach by leaning into the same 4-2-5 system he’s now installing for the Trojans. And in doing so, the Horned Frogs became just the third team in college football history to finish atop that category for three consecutive seasons. Thirty of his defensive players were chosen in the NFL Draft.
“Coach Patterson is one of one,” Riley said at Big Ten media days. “I’ve told people I’ve had a chance throughout my career, calling plays for a little while now, to call plays against a lot of the people that you would say these are the greatest minds of this last era of college football, greatest defensive minds. I’ve never coached against somebody that I thought was more unique and tougher to go against than Gary Patterson.
“I think we’re certainly feeling his impact defensively. I’m certainly feeling his impact of just having a fellow head coach in the building, right, somebody else that has sat in this chair and made some of these decisions. You can’t replace that type of expertise and experience that he brings to the table. He’s incredibly motivated. He wouldn’t have done this without that. I think he senses the opportunity — even for a guy that’s accomplished just about everything you can in this game — [that] there’s a few other things left out there. He knows he can do that here.”
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Riley’s original choice for defensive coordinator, Alex Grinch, oversaw units that ranked 106th in total defense for 2022 and 119th in 2023. With Lynn’s arrival, he helped elevate USC’s group to 77th in total defense in 2024 and 49th in 2025 — noteworthy improvements that shouldn’t be ignored — but even last year’s group failed to finish among the top 10 in the conference for scoring defense after surrendering 23 points per game. That number ballooned to 35 points per game in the Trojans’ four losses to Illinois, Notre Dame, Oregon and TCU.
Now, Patterson has inherited a unit that only returns five starters and must replace star safety Bishop Fitzgerald, a consensus All-American and first-team All-Big Ten performer last year who’s now with the Tennessee Titans.
But Riley and Bowden infused the roster with several impact players from the transfer portal in nose tackle Alex VanSumeren from Michigan State, edge rusher Zuriah Fisher from Penn State and cornerback Jontez Williams from Iowa State. The Trojans’ vaunted 2026 high school recruiting class, which edged Alabama, Oregon and Ohio State to finish No. 1 in the country, also includes two five-star defensive prospects in edge rusher Luke Wafle and defensive tackle Jaimeon Winfield.
To push himself and USC over that hump, Patterson is tasked with expanding on the progress his predecessor, Lynn, began to make before joining Penn State late last year. And with more talent available to him than ever before, the prolonged USC rebuild will finally reach its completion.
“I’m proud of the progress we’ve made on that side of the ball,” Riley said at Big Ten media days. “But my expectations are for us to be just as good defensively as we are offensively as we are on special teams. I want to see it across the board. There’s no reason at a place like this, you know, why that can’t happen. It’s my job to acquit our program to be great there, and I think the moves that we’ve made in recruiting, in retention, bringing in Gary [Patterson] in — I think all of that gets us closer.
“So I’m bullish on how good that group can be.”
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