Now Is Time For Some Pete Carroll Magic

USC is at a fork in the road, and it's on Pete Carroll to make sure the program goes the right way.

By KURT HELIN

Updated 12:45 PM PST, Mon, Nov 2, 2009

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Saturday was a Halloween nightmare for USC and its fans, losing by 27 points on national television. Nobody can easily remember the last time the Trojans were dominated like that, but it feels like Paul Hacket was coaching, back in the Medieval Dark Ages.

That was before Pete Carroll brought his Renaissance to the USC campus, before this current age of enlightenment — seven straight Pac-10 titles and BCS game berths, constantly being in the hunt for the national championship. Trojan fans started to feel all that was their birthright.

Not this year. Not after the embarrassment in Oregon.

If the Trojans want that birthright back, they have to start earning it today, the rest of this season. And it falls to Carroll to make sure that happens, in both scheme and effort.

USC’s roster is loaded with guys who will be playing on Sundays in a few years. That is particularly true on defense — safety Taylor Mays already has scouts drooling and will be gone in the first round. The entire USC defensive line will get a shot in the NFL. It’s like that throughout the USC defensive roster, two and three deep. Combine that with Carroll being considered a defensive guru and you were supposed to have an immovable object.

Yet Oregon racked up 613 yards on its way to 47 points. And they made it look easy. There were holes created by the Oregon offensive line that a junior-high flag football running back could have gained good yards through. Duck receivers were wide open. Oregon had a better scheme, and its players wanted it more. They looked like Southern Cal fans expect their team to look.

USC was supposed to win this year thanks to a stout defense while the offense (and its freshman quarterback) slowly came along. But the defense has regressed (while the offense has matured). The second halves that the Trojans used to dominate have become a weak point. Yes, there have been injuries, but there have always been injuries, just in years past the backups stepped up.

The next four games — starting with Arizona State this Saturday — is when USC starts building for next year. When the players and the coaches start to earn the birthright back rather than just expecting it to be given them. There are proud programs — Florida State and Miami come to mind — where they won because they had great athletes, but those programs eroded as teams started expect to be that good without the work, without the coaching imagination. The coaches at those programs let their systems and messages get stale.

Pete Carroll cannot let that happen to USC. It is on him. The Trojans are at a fork in the road, and that stale program and a fan base living in the past is down one of those choices. But USC can take steps down the right path the rest of the way and start to carry that over to next year. When the birthright can be earned back.