What a beautiful night it was! Under an electric Los Angeles sunset, the Trojans took care of business against the Stanford Cardinal. I am glad to say that I was wrong in my season preview by picking us to lose this game. USC faced a lot of questions after the underwhelming win against Western Michigan, but answered all of those and then some on Saturday.
The offense got out to a quick start and rolled all night long. Collectively, the unit racked up 623 yards of total offense. Led by the steady hand of Sam Darnold, and the blistering speed of Ronald Jones and Stephen Carr, USC brought a balanced attack into the Coliseum. Overall they went for 307 yards on the ground, and 316 yards in the air. Veteran receiver Steven Mitchell Jr. had just the night we know he is capable of and I’m thrilled for him. Mitchell, who often ranked third behind JuJu Smith-Schuster and Darreus Rogers, endured a season ending knee injury last year. By the time he was fully rehabbed, he faced the challenge of earning his spot back as a new crop of talent had been recruited to the program. A two touchdown and 94 yard outing was great to see from Steven, who looked as confident as ever and is a great target to compliment Deontay Burnett. Stephen Carr showed that his week one performance was no beginner’s luck and that we have a two headed monster forming in the USC backfield. A ton of credit is due to our offensive line for providing the running room for these guys to punch through the line and accelerate into the open field.
Defensively, we are getting there. We are far from perfect, but I saw noticeable improvement. You could really tell how Stanford had planned to attack our secondary. They repeatedly threw towards Jack Jones, and stayed away from Biggie Marshall for the majority of the night. Jones, a tremendous athlete in his own right, will sometimes try to make the hero play or gets caught in a double move but that’s something I expect our coaches can guide him past. He did have 6 tackles though, so no need to split hairs on his performance. It really stuck out to me how our defensive line was able to pressure the quarterback late into the game. It tells me that we are well conditioned and that those guys can be relied upon to close games out when it counts. If we can sure up our tackling and tighten up the run defense, we will be looking very good.
Special teams took a hit as kicker Michael Brown suffered an ACL tear and is done for the year. We will press forward with a replacement kickoff man and walk on Chase McGrath will have full ownership of the placekicking duties.
We get Texas in just two days from now and I cannot wait. On paper, we should win this game. Something tells me the emotions of college football will kick into high gear and fans won’t be the only ones watching replays of “that game” back in January of 2006 all week. Come Monday we’ll have a lot to write about, so until then…
FIGHT ON!
The Late Game 
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