Normally, you win a game; you move on; you ignore all the nonsense from the losing side. Get the "W" and simply block out anything that was said afterward. This applies to controversial calls or anything else; you don't need to engage- you have the win. However, USC head coach Lincoln Riley has made a couple of legitimately weird comments after the Wisconsin game, so it's hard to stay quiet.
The first came from Riley in his weekly press conference after Wisconsin upset USC. Riley spoke to reporters, working hard to justify his job, but he said, "I thought defensively we dominated maybe 90 percent of the plays in the game." Pause for a second. That's insane.
Yes, Wisconsin's offense wasn't great, and Colton Joseph only had 58 yards through the air, but to say that 90% of the game was "dominated" by USC is a wild take when you lose by three scores. I bet the USC fanbase feels so much better about the loss now that Riley has said that. That will really help put the hot-seat stuff to bed. As long as they "dominated" 90% of the game defensively, the loss is okay now. That's a crazy thing to say.
Somehow it gets worse...
#USC HC Lincoln Riley: "I thought defensively we dominated maybe 90 percent of the plays in the game."
— Shotgun Spratling (@ShotgunSpr) October 27, 2026
Said they had a couple of critical errors letting ball get outside and critical penalties, but otherwise played well. Felt there was a lot to be encouraged by.
Lincoln Riley put his foot in his mouth about USC vs. Wisconsin multiple times
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There were times when he credited Wisconsin and said, "You can't play this way and still expect to win against a good team." So it's not that he had zero respect for the Badgers, but he seems seriously delusional about how his team performed. Did he not watch the same game? It's truly incredible what he said, but that first one was just a taste. The second one was even more outrageous.
Riley told reporters, "We did some really good things in the run game." If you didn't spit out your water after you read that, you maybe also didn't watch the game. For Riley clearly didn't. The USC Trojans ended the game with NEGATIVE rushing yards. Their rushing attack was in the hole, with a -17 yard performance. Yet, somehow, Riley said, "We did some really good things in the run game." Incredible.
Lincoln Riley on the Wisconsin game:
— Adam Bradford (@Adam_Bradford14) October 28, 2026
“We did some really good things in the run game.”
Reminder: The Trojans had negative 17 rushing yards.
Riley may be speaking about the non-quarterback rushing attack. For USC's quarterback, Jayden Maiva ended the day with -57 yards rushing. This drastically reduced anything the Trojans were doing on the ground. So maybe he was talking about the running backs? Even then, if you give him this benefit of the doubt, he's still wrong.
The Trojans had only 40 yards rushing on 20 attempts. Math doesn't even have to be your strong suit to see that easy equation. 20 attempts for 40 yards is 2.0 yards per attempt. That's bad. The longest rush of the day for USC was seven yards, and they did do that a couple of times. So maybe his coaching staff only showed him those clips?
The Badgers had nine tackles for loss. NINE times the Badgers forced a USC runner down before even getting to the line of scrimmage. Yes, some of that is Maiva, but plenty of it was from the running backs too.
Riley's comments were wild, we've acknowledged it, and can move on. He's USC's problem.
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