Lincoln Riley and the USC Trojans fell to the Washington Huskies at home on Saturday by the score of 52-42. It was yet another brutal effort from the Trojans’ defense. It has now given up north of 40 points in five of the past six games.
It also has one big-name coach out of a job. According to Ross Dellenger of Yahoo! Sports, Riley has opted to fire defensive coordinator Alex Grinch.
This is a move USC simply had to make given how disastrous the Grinch-led defense has been recently. In Saturday’s loss to Washington, the Trojans gave up 572 total yards of offense. That came after USC yielded 49 points in a narrow win over a pedestrian CAL team a week ago.
Grinch, 43, followed Riley from Oklahoma to USC back in November of 2021. His first season as the Trojans’ defensive coordinator did not go swimmingly, either. USC gave up an average of 29 points per game, pretty much wasting Caleb Williams’ Heisman season in the process.
With the Trojans at 7-3 on the season, their championship aspirations are all but shot. This makes the move to fire Alex Grinch completely understandable given the Trojans’ preseason expectations.
Defensive line coach Shaun Nua and inside linebackers coach Brian Odom will serve as co-defensive coordinators for the Trojans moving forward.
USC must compete with the sixth-ranked Oregon Ducks on the road next week before closing up shop on the regular season against UCLA.
Set to move to the Big Ten next season, USC’s defense simply needs to improve if the program is going to have any chance against better competition moving forward. It’s that simple.