LOS ANGELES (AP) — Just about everybody involved with Southern California's defense last season still seems embarrassed about it.
The Trojans turned in one of the worst overall defensive performances in this school's proud football history in 2023. Coordinator Alex Grinch was fired and head coach Lincoln Riley became a national punch line while USC finished 8-5 after a 6-0 start despite fielding the third highest-scoring offense in the FBS, led by future No. 1 pick Caleb Williams.
Eight months later, No. 23 USC is back with a completely revamped defensive coaching staff and several veteran transfers to bolster the unit that stalled Riley's rebuilding project at the school. The Trojans get their first chance to move past the humiliation of last year when they face No. 13 LSU on Sunday in Las Vegas.
But defensive lineman Jamil Muhammad acknowledges the stigma hanging over his defense heading into a showdown with an SEC powerhouse to begin the Trojans' first year in the Big Ten.
“You’ve got to realize that until you have a real chance to show what you’ve been working on and how much better you’ve gotten, what you did and what everybody saw is going to be on their minds until you change it,” Muhammad said. “Obviously our focus isn’t on changing everybody else’s mind. Our focus is on getting better and fixing those things that we know we have to be better at.”
After last season, the Trojans needed to get better at absolutely everything related to defense.
USC finished 116th out of 130 FBS teams in total defense, allowing 432.8 yards per game. The Trojans were 118th in scoring defense, allowing 34.4 points per game, while ending up 124th in first downs allowed, 106th in third-down conversion percentage and 101st in yards passing allowed.
Several players are back from that defense, including linebacker Mason Cobb. To varying degrees, they acknowledge the frustration of being responsible for last season's regression, and they've had to sit with the notion for months now.
“I don’t ever dwell in the past. I’ve never been that type of guy,” said Cobb, the Trojans’ leading tackler last season. “When you do that, you hold on to stress, sadness, anger. ... Last year is not something you forget, but it’s something you learn from and move on, and that’s how we approach this year.”
USC was 116th in rushing defense, while crosstown rival UCLA finished second, allowing nearly 100 fewer yards per game. That's only one reason Riley entrusted his defense to coordinator D’Anton Lynn, who led the Bruins to an impressive resurgence across town.
Lynn's new players — along with a couple of veterans who accompanied him from Westwood to downtown LA — praise his teaching methods and his overall scheme, which is designed to be less complicated and more easily implemented than other defenses.
“It’s just easy to understand,” said cornerback John Humphrey, who followed Lynn from UCLA. “A lot of systems are very complicated for the players. This system is very simple. It’s up to everybody to make plays and thrive in this system. (Lynn) tells you that this is the way to do it, and you can do it at a high level because you’re here, so let’s do it.”
Lynn's pedigreed new coaching staff includes Eric Henderson, the longtime Los Angeles Rams assistant praised by Aaron Donald as a defensive line guru; defensive backs coach Doug Belk, the respected former Houston defensive coordinator; and linebackers coach Matt Entz, who won two national championships as the head coach at North Dakota State.
The USC linebackers already speak highly of Entz, who took a step back to an assistant’s role to build his resume for bigger head coaching jobs.
“He’s been everything I asked for as a coach, so I’m trying to give him everything he asks for as a player,” said Eric Gentry, the 6-foot-6 hybrid linebacker who had 45 tackles last season.
Gentry added that one of the best parts of USC’s defensive reboot is “just being able to talk to the coaches.”
“I think we were (thinking) more about other stuff last year instead of football,” Gentry said. “It’s way more straightforward this year, more NFL-style.”
The Trojans needed to get better, but they also needed to be bigger. Muhammad was among several players who added significant amounts of muscle in the offseason to shake the perception of USC's defense as a flashy, speed-reliant group.
Along with Humphrey, the new defensive arrivals include his fellow UCLA defensive back, Kamari Ramsey; former Florida State defensive back Greedy Vance; Oregon State linebacker Easton Mascarenas-Arnold; his brother, safety Akili Arnold; and Wyoming defensive lineman Gavin Meyer. Each newcomer has a good chance to start.
“We’ve been working hard as a group of brothers,” Muhammad said. “I’m just excited to go see what we do, and put it all together. It’s going to be a show, for sure.”
AP college football: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-football-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/college-football
FILE - Southern California coach Lincoln Riley watches during the second half of the team's NCAA college football game against UCLA, Nov. 18, 2023, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ryan Sun, File)
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) — Jacksonville Jaguars coach Doug Pederson and general manager Trent Baalke never developed enough synergy, if any at all.
Pederson thought talent was Jacksonville's bigger issue as losses mounted; Baalke believed coaching was the problem. Regardless, the pairing wasn't working in Year 3 — and everyone inside the building knew it.
Jaguars owner Shad Khan could have justified a complete overhaul. Instead, the billionaire businessman settled for choosing between the duo. He opted for Baalke, a questionable decision that could affect who becomes Jacksonville’s next head coach.
Khan fired Pederson on Monday, a day after a 26-23 overtime loss at Indianapolis. It was the team’s 18th loss in its last 23 games. More surprising, he kept Baalke.
“I didn't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater,” Khan said during a Zoom.
Khan added that rebooting the coaching staff, the scouting department and the rest of the football operations staff would amount to firing roughly 85 people.
“To change all of that is almost like suicidal," he said. "That’s like shooting yourself in the foot. We need to go to work on something that is broken, that needs to be fixed and continually be improving things that are working.”
Khan made the move with one year remaining on Pederson’s contract and more than five months after the owner stood in front of coaches and players and declared this the “best team assembled by the Jacksonville Jaguars ever."
“Winning now” was Khan’s edict as training camp opened and after he committed nearly half a billion dollars to signing quarterback Trevor Lawrence, pass rusher Josh Hines-Allen and cornerback Tyson Campbell to long-term deals in the offseason. It was the most expensive stretch of roster building in franchise history.
And Khan got little return on his investment.
He blamed predictability on both sides of the ball as the main culprit in the team's downfall.
“Deception is a big part of it,” Khan said. “Unpredictability. If you know exactly what we’re going to do on offense or defense, you better have the 22 best players to help us win a football game. So being unpredictable is, I think, is modern football, and we have to be able to show that on the field.”
Pederson, who led the Eagles to their first Super Bowl title in 2018, finished 9-8 in his first two campaigns in Jacksonville and made the playoffs in his first year. He became the first coach in franchise history to start with back-to-back winning seasons and was a welcome relief following Urban Meyer’s 13-game tenure that was filled with dysfunction.
But Pederson’s injury-riddled team went 1-5 down the stretch in 2023 and missed the postseason after spending nearly two months atop the AFC South. He thought getting Lawrence healthy and revamping his defensive staff would change the team’s fortunes. Neither made a difference.
“It's unfortunate because at the end of the day we all had a hand in it,” receiver Christian Kirk said. “I have a ton of respect for Doug. He’s made me a better football player, better man. I think he’s one of the better coaches to have coached in this league, and it’s just unfortunate the way that things went.”
More damning: Pederson failed to develop Lawrence or create a team identity, handed play-calling duties to Press Taylor despite Khan making his wishes known and showed no urgency to try to fix a defense that regressed under new coordinator Ryan Nielsen.
“There’s a lot of factors that have gone into our season,” tight end Evan Engram said Monday. “It’s not just the coaching. It's everybody."
The Jaguars (4-13) have notched double-digit losses in 10 of Khan’s 13 years as owner. Now, Khan will hire his sixth head coach; current and creative NFL offensive coordinators Ben Johnson (Detroit) and Liam Coen (Tampa Bay) should top the list. But would they even agree to work with Baalke, whose draft picks have been mostly suspect and his latest free-agent class is arguably the worst in franchise history?
The 56-year-old Pederson went 23-30 with Jacksonville, a far cry from the Super Bowl-winning coach Khan thought he hired in February 2021.
His tenure with Jacksonville was mostly forgettable. Sure, there was the come-from-behind stunner over the Los Angeles Chargers in the AFC wild-card round in January 2023 in which Lawrence rallied the Jaguars from a 27-0 deficit and won 31-30. Otherwise, Pederson was fairly pedestrian.
His ultimate undoing came in close games, with Jacksonville going 3-10 in one-score contests this season. Whether that’s talent or coaching is debatable. Regardless, Pederson got little public support from players down the stretch.
Now Khan has to find the right coach to get Lawrence — and the rest of the team — to another level. It also will have to be someone amenable to working with Baalke, whose coaching list includes Jim Harbaugh (2011-14), Jim Tomsula (2015), Chip Kelly (2022), Meyer (2021) and Pederson (2022-24).
AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl
Jacksonville Jaguars head coach Doug Pederson pauses during a news conference after an NFL football game against the Indianapolis Colts, Sunday, Jan. 5, 2025, in Indianapolis. The Colts won 26-23 in overtime. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)
Jacksonville Jaguars head coach Doug Pederson pauses during a news conference after an NFL football game against the Indianapolis Colts, Sunday, Jan. 5, 2025, in Indianapolis. The Colts won 26-23 in overtime. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)
