To get some inside information on the USC football team, Daily Bruin Sports reached out to the Daily Trojan – USC’s student news publication – and asked Sports editor Julia Poe a few questions about the Trojans before their upcoming game against the Bruins this Saturday.
Daily Bruin: What do you think would have to happen for UCLA to spring the upset Saturday? What weakness do the Trojans have that might make them susceptible?
Julia Poe: One overall issue that the team has had this year is just being healthy and so when you have those secondary, second-string guys coming on the offensive line and parts of the defense, I think those are where the team’s big weaknesses are on both sides of the ball.
On defense, we’ve been doing a lot better at shutting down the run game, but we’re really more susceptible to those long balls. Our secondary hasn’t been standout this year. … They’re not strong, … that’s definitely one of the weaker parts of our game.
So if you can attack on the long ball on offense, that’s definitely going to help a lot as well as just basically finding a way to keep the defense on the field as much as possible.
The biggest thing, I think is really capitalizing on any offensive mistakes. We make a lot of them, like way too many of them, and if you get in (quarterback Sam) Darnold’s head early – he can be either the man or he can throw like three picks in one game.
So really trying to capitalize on any offensive mistakes and setting the tone early would be big for UCLA just because once USC gets rolling, they can churn out 21 points in six minutes and make it look really easy.
DB: USC has already clinched the Pac-12 South and, outside of the rivalry and the Victory Bell, of course, might not have much to play for this weekend. Is there any concern that the team might not have the same fire or motivation this week?
JP: No, this team is very pissed off – for lack of better words.
They’ve got a lot of fire in them just because they’re having another season where they came in, they were supposed to be phenomenal and they just tanked at the beginning. Even when they were pulling out wins, they were not playing up to the caliber of play that they were expected to.
And every single weekend, you talk to the guys after the game and they’re not really talking about, “Oh, yeah, Pac-12 championship, that’s enough for us.” They still honestly genuinely believe and crave and want to be in the College Football Playoffs. And so, this weekend is big because it’s helping them set a tone that could help them move up.
We didn’t move up in the rankings for the playoffs last week, and I think a lot of people took that personally because they just stayed at that No. 11 spot. So these guys want to be in the top 10. They want to be a top-10 team and they want to get there before the Pac-12 championship.
There’s a lot of things I could see happening this weekend, but I don’t think they’re going to come out cold at all. I think they’re going to come out very, very up and very, very ready to play well. Whether or not that’s executed is really more of the question.
DB: Darnold had some struggles early in the season, with six interceptions in the first three games, but it seems like he’s recovered lately. Why do you think he had difficulty early in the year, and what has changed for him as of late that’s helped him play cleaner games?
JP: I think it was a combination of a couple things.
First off, he had a lot of young wide receivers. You see how well JuJu Smith-Schuster is doing in the NFL right now, and you kind of understand why (Darnold) was able to be so successful last year – he was throwing to an NFL-caliber receiver.
And when you lose that caliber of a player that you’re throwing to, everything becomes a little harder. He’s having to place passes a lot more specifically. He’s having to make sure that they’re aimed a lot more specifically and that they’re really hitting his receiver right.
(Smith-Schuster) sometimes would jump like three feet in the air and just snag something wild, like, “How did he do that?” So (Darnold) has to be a lot more consistent on his end and he also just had to build that kind of repartee with his receivers before he was able to get there.
Obviously we had the O-line issues, where at one point every single starter I think, on our O-line, except for one guy, was injured, so that is always going to mess with the quarterback, especially one who runs as much as (Darnold).
And I also think that just when you’re on the cover of Sports Illustrated, and when you have all that attention, it puts a huge target on your helmet and I think he came into the season and everyone wanted to hit (him), you know? And you saw that. He just was getting nailed in the first few games, and I think that kind of changes the fear that you have in the pocket.
So there were a lot of factors, but I think those three things really probably were the biggest.
DB: I want to talk a little bit about Ronald Jones II. He’s sixth all-time on USC’s career rushing list and the five people in front of him are three Heisman trophy winners and two Heisman runners-up, yet it feels like we don’t hear a whole lot about him. Why do you think he gets overlooked a bit, considering how well he’s been doing?
JP: I really don’t understand it. I mean, look. Everyone on campus loves Ro-Jo. When you hear commentators watching him – whenever anyone is watching him and they have him in front of them – they’re like, “This guy is one of the best of the best.”
He put on 10 (to) 15 pounds in the offseason and he trucks through guys. He like drags them with him – it’s so much fun to watch.
I think some of it is a little bit of that Pac-12 bias. I’ve been happy to see (running back Bryce) Love up at Stanford finally getting the appreciation that I thought he should have deserved from the beginning of the season. And so I think you always have to see guys perform even better than the East Coast players to get their attention when you’re playing a Pac-12 or any West Coast team.
It’s a little frustrating, but I think the good thing about Ro-Jo is that he is very grounded in not being too focused on that stuff. He’s not like some other players that we’ve had in the past or that any team has where they’re like, “I want to win the Heisman, this is important to me,” so he’s going to keep trucking no matter what, which is a good thing for us.
DB: UCLA’s run defense has been awful this year, and USC obviously has Jones. Do you think the Trojans will try to stay balanced on offense, or could they attack with the run similar to the way Washington did and barely throw the ball?
JP: I think they’ll balance it. Because USC is – we have an incredible running back in (Jones), and then you also have (tailback) Stephen Carr and those other guys who are really hot right now, but I think – and you’ll hear coach (Clay) Helton talk about this a lot – that offense, even though our run game is so good, we play best when they are in that balanced pass-throw offense that is balanced out by the running game.
They do best when they pound it to Ro-Jo like four times in a row, and he’ll get like eight yards every time, and then all of a sudden they’ll snap it back to (Darnold) and he’ll pass for like 30 yards to (wide reciever) Deontay Burnett and they’re in the red zone. I mean that’s kind of the style that we’ve seen work for them best.
I think they’ll balance it, just also to make sure that they’re not keeping the offense out there too long and still kind of letting it be fun for the guys and letting them feel like they have that balance on attack.
So I doubt that they’ll just run it. We have the quarterback, we have the receivers, everyone’s coming back and going to be healthy at this point, where I think that they can really balance it and that’s the way that they’ll come out with the W.
DB: Who’s the lesser-known player who you think might end up having a big impact Saturday?
JP: I think we’ve seen (Michael) Pittman (Jr.), he is a receiver for us.
He wasn’t getting much playing time and his dad who (won a Super Bowl), tweeted about it and was something like, “Yo, why isn’t my son getting enough playing time?” And he sat down with the coaches, the coaches talked to him, and Pittman started playing more.
He grabbed a touchdown and got over 100 yards in his last game and he has really been showing up with big catches in big scenarios so I think we will probably see him come up.
DB: Who met with coaches? Was it (Pittman) himself or his dad?
JP: No, it was his dad I believe was the one who met with them.
Coaches were like, “Yeah, we saw the tweets. We’re going to meet with him because we respect him a lot.” And then, yeah, he started playing more.
His dad is a former running back I think and both of his sons play football now as well. But yeah, he talked to the coaches and the coaches started playing him more and now Michael is doing really well.
DB: What’s your prediction for the game?
JP: I think the Trojans are going to pull it out. I’m hopeful that they’ll be able to pull out a win because they deserve it at this point.
This is a team that has fought through a lot of adversity this season on the injury side and they are just so banged up at this point. It’s a home game, it’s rivalry week and everyone is very excited about it.
I think with the way that (Darnold) has been performing lately, with the way that Ro-Jo has been performing lately, and also just with the way that the defense has been able to really stand tall in that first half when they were on the road in Colorado, holding Colorado to zero points, I think if they can stand tall like that for all four quarters, they will be able to pull out a pretty solid rivalry win.