Trojans pick up an OT from Portal

USC has taken 4 Defensive players in the portal, with more to come

Can't see how either leaves. Dedich needs a year of tape at center if he wants to play in the NFL. Jones has a degree from stanford. He'll get more touches next year with Dye done and he gets to play with a defending HT winner. Short of going to OSU, UGA, Michigan or Bama, any other move is a step back.

Jones said he hasn’t decided, perhaps waiting for an nfl evaluation. Thought I read that Dedich is coming back. Not an official announcement more so that he has been telling people that he will return.

Not sure what the nfl is going to evaluate him on. He barely played between Rice and Dye's injury. He's basically in Dedich's boat: he needs game tape. Again, I'll be surprised if he doesn't come back, unless he's gonna forego football altogether and start putting the stanford degree to work (not a bad option) or he tries to get into coaching...

Good post…. Still would like another 300lber (+) to rotate, or for backup to inj. Not sure if we r getting Pili back. Covid made eligibility very confusing.

What’s your take on Grinch,,, overall? Love to hear your thoughts. I gave my opinion mid season. Bottom line is he didn’t have the horses. Front 7 was below average for a power 5 school, period. Still not sure if the scheme was great for what little we had up front. So if I had to guess, I’m not very confident Grinch is an elite DC. He gets another year with better players up front. We will know after 23 if he’s our guy.

The 2021 USC defense was the WORST USC defense I've ever seen. There was not one thing they did well, culminating in what we saw last year vs UCLA at the coliseum. Right on par with what they did all year. The talent was terrible, the scheme was terrible, the S&C was terrible. With that said...

2 good signs I saw this year:

1) No one regressed under Grinch. If they sucked in 2021 they sucked in 2022. But more importantly the guys with some semblance of NFL talent did quite well. Tuli and Blackmon were phenomenal. No one thought Blackmon would be anywhere close to Christian Gonzales when they transferred out of Colorado. It's quite arguable who had the better year. I think Blackmon should've been pac-12 first team, Gonzales 2nd team. I think Blackmon was right behind Clark Phillips for second best DB in the conference and Blackmon had nothing but great things to say about Grinch. Contrast that with Lupoi in Oregon who had much more talent to work with in 2022. They had 3 projected first round picks in Sewell, Dorlus, and Gonzales to start the year. Oregon had their worst defense since 2016 I believe (only their redzone TD% was decent). Not to dump on Lupoi but just to compare - - Sewell regressed and he is definitely NFL level of talent. You didn't see anything like that with Grinch. I think we can all agree the bar is not Lupoi but a championship defense and I think Lupoi is terrible, but Grinch is not Lupoi level of terrible as some would have you believe.

2) They actually had an overarching strategy before the season - - a plan. I know...it's been so long since USC had coaches who actually tried to flesh out a plan on defense based on the talent - - and that plan was turnovers. USC coaches knew the offense would be top 10, they also knew that other teams' offense would have trouble trying to keep up and would force things they wouldn't normally force to try and keep up. So Grinch had a plan to make turnovers his number one focus. He even said as much and referenced the strong correlation between turnover margin and winning games. He studied it. USC turnover margin this season was not luck, it was coached.

Now the bad:

1) Grinch doesn't base his strong side/weak side defense on where the tight end is aligned, he bases it on the field. So even if the tight end is lined up on the short side of the field, USC's defense will line up the strong side of their defense to the wide side of the field (more bodies on defense dependent on how much open field there is rather than where the tight end is.) IMO this is why you see opposing offenses feast or famine on USC. The problem with this is you need linebackers that are not only excellent in run fits, but can also COVER. It puts so much stress on your SAM and WILL backers because they have to not only be excellent at shedding blocks, but versatile enough to drop down and play excellent pass coverage on a slot receiver that is on the weak side of the offensive formation between the OT and the split end receiver or disguised in the backfield. While Gentry can do this, if he gets injured, are we really going to ask Nomura to be this good in pass coverage, lol. That's one of the reasons the defense regressed drastically when Gentry went down. And Gentry doesn't have the weight to be great at run fits anyways though his pass overage is A+. To me it seems like Grinch needs specific players to fit his scheme rather than tailoring the scheme to fit the players - - smells a lot like Sark and Kiff. We all remember the disaster of 2007 on offense when there were a few injuries and we had no fullback. Maybe I'm biased because when I played it was simple, if the MIKE called out "rainbow" the tight end was on the right side, if they called out "lightening" the tight end was on the left side. We didn't care if it was the wide side or the short side of the field.

2) Grinch is a very knowledgeable guy, and well spoken....but he gives out a lot of information when he talks. Sometimes too much. I don't know how he is in the locker room, but when he speaks I put myself in the players position. I like a defense that has simple assignments, plays loose, fast, and aggressive. If you load the players up with too much information it can make them hesitant and not want to make a mistake. I hope that's not what's going on. These are kids, this isn't a complicated NFL defense we are trying to run. He needs to keep it more simple and I have a feeling how he talks in the press is how he talks to his players - - complicated. A college player with too much information in his head is a hesitant player.

3) I didn't see him on the recruiting trail very much. If you have a defense that needs very specific players to work, ok fine. But I better see you recruiting your ass off for those players. I didn't see him going all over the country like Lincoln was doing after the regular season ended. A college D-coordinator needs to be a relentless recruiter. Tackett Curtis mentioned Odom a lot and a guy he is always in contact with, Shelby mentioned Nua. Those are by far our two best defensive recruits, and studs, but why is Grinch not really mentioned by them, just their position coaches and Riley. Is he recruiting the best he can? Obviously I could totally be off and interpreting things differently or missing something and I am not in the know, but he doesn't come off as a relentless recruiter to me.

Great post, thanks