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Mailbag: Is USC vs. Texas a trap game? What makes a trap game, anyway?

USC cornerback Jack Jones returns a kick during the Trojans’ season opener against Western Michigan on Sept. 2.
(Shotgun Spratling / Los Angeles Times)
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Every week*, The Times’ USC beat reporter, Zach Helfand, will answer your questions. Tweet yours to @zhelfand or email them to zach.helfand@latimes.com. And after every USC game, you can leave a voice message on the USC Overtime hotline, at (213) 357-0984, for a call-in podcast posted every Sunday morning.

*Hopefully

Mailbags, like Jonas brothers (you go, Nick), can often peak on the third go-round. There were no mailbags in Weeks 1 or 2, but despair not. We’ve just avoided the bit-too-high expectations of the preseason and the doom and gloom of USC’s uninspiring win over Western Michigan. That means we can graduate straight to warp-speed hype with USC coming off its 42-24 win over Stanford.

I’m going to pump the brakes just slightly. There are issues with the Trojans that need to be addressed before I’m buying in completely. The offense physically dominated Stanford. That’s great. But Stanford’s defensive line is on the weak side this season.

The defensive front seven was good but not nearly the suffocating, Alabama-level, hope-crushing good that’s needed to be a legitimate national championship contender. The pass defense looked vulnerable, even though Stanford didn’t exactly torch the secondary.

There’s room for improvement, is what I’m saying. USC improved a lot last season. Follow the same arc and you can start looking at hotels in Santa Clara in December.

To the questions!

This was a big topic of conversation at practice among us reporters. Just about every non-marquee game was mentioned as a possible trap game: Washington State (more on that later), Colorado (no, that’s a legitimately tough game), Notre Dame (rivalry, moot), UCLA (rivalry, moot), California (possible, I guess), Utah (possible), Arizona (no) and Arizona State (possible, I guess).

There are a few criteria that can help qualify a game as a trap. (So we’re on the same page: All let-down games are trap games, but not all trap games are let-down games, just like all squares are rectangles, but not vice versa.) Let’s see how well Texas fits. Categories are in order of importance:

  1. Week after big game, playing a lesser opponent? Check.
  2. Opponent is sneaky good enough to win? Grudging check. Texas is an enormous underdog among bettors. USC players and coaches have done more talking than they usually do about how talented Texas is, so I believe they know what Tom Herman has done in his career, and they know that they can lose if they don’t score enough points. But that point spread though.
  3. Late-season undefeated pressure cooker? Nah. USC is undefeated. But not nearly late enough in the season to apply any extra pressure.
  4. Look-ahead temptations? Does not apply.
  5. Tight-travel test? Nope.
  6. Fatigue factor? Not yet.

Mitigating factors include:

  • Everyone in the country wondering loudly if a game will be a trap game for months (see: Washington State). Does not apply this week.
  • A rowdy home atmosphere. Relevant. Texas is the first sellout at the Coliseum since 2013. The game will draw significantly more people than Stanford. I was awakened in my apartment in Santa Monica early Thursday morning by a neighbor bumping Conquest, Salute to Troy and Fight On. On repeat. I didn’t even know I lived next to big USC fans. People are pumped.

Ruling: No let down.

No, and I have two important reasons. As of very early Friday morning, the betting lines have moved even further, anywhere from USC -15.5 to USC -17. That’s a huge line for two power programs playing each other. As a rule, I don’t think anyone should ever pick against a talented team with a good coach that’s getting more than two touchdowns.

My second reason is that I chose USC to win by 17 points, and I am bad at picks.

Patricia, your question is going to make some people a little peeved, I suspect. But it’s a valid one. I know this is a big ask for USC fans, but for the sake of this question, let’s set aside questions about fairness of the NCAA sanctions and just look at the sanctions themselves. Let’s also set aside, on the other end of the spectrum, questions about the Integrity Of The Game. Let’s just look at what people care about, which is winning.

This is how most fans will look at this: The sanctions did cripple the program for years. But (but!) USC claimed two national championships during that era. If someone offers you multiple national championships in exchange for several lean seasons, you shake that person’s hand, take the deal and walk away swiftly.

Plus, the Pete Carroll era produced the most compelling college football teams in many years. Don’t cry because it’s over (and you were barred from postseason play, lost scholarships and went through years of chaos). Smile because it happened.

Atomic, my man, you are going to agitate more people here than our friend Patricia. From a reporter’s perspective, I’m with you. My life would be a lot easier in the first days of training camp if I didn’t have to remember that Isaiah Langley is not No. 14 anymore, he’s No. 24, and that Ykili Ross is actually No. 14 now, not No. 30. Alas, no.

From a fan’s perspective, the lack of nameplates is great. Is there anything inherently cool about not having names on uniforms? Absolutely not. It’s cool because it’s different. USC is the only team that’s never used names.

Is the only use in that so USC fans can have something to brag about when they’re 300 messages deep into a message-board flame war, and their typical arsenal of UCLA or Notre Dame insults have been exhausted? Yes. But a sport in which there’s no ability to assert superiority over another human because his school would stoop so low as to identify its own players with nameplates when yours never, ever would, is no sport at all, I say.

Yup. Reid Budrovich, who has done an excellent job punting in two games, will be the backup. This also means USC will use zero scholarship kickers or punters in a typical game.

What’s up is that USC’s best options at punt returner — Ajene Harris and Jack Jones — are both athletic but new to punt returning. And punt returning is surprisingly difficult. Imagine very large, very fast people running at you full speed as you attempt to properly judge a ball that moves much differently than normal throws you see 98% of the time in football. It takes time to learn. Harris and Jones are capable of catching a football and then running with it. But they’re being overly cautious right now, which has resulted in too many fair catches or no catches at all.

I suppose that’s better than a fumble. But USC has returned just one punt all season, which isn’t ideal.

Moderately. USC has capable backups in Connor Murphy and Jordan Iosefa. The bigger concern is Gustin’s toe. Coach Clay Helton is optimistic that Gustin will play in two games, if he doesn’t play against Texas. But he’s an explosive edge player, and it’s not great news that he now has two screws in his big toe.

I’m using a tweet from old friend and former Times intern Jesse in order to shameless segue into a contentious debate from the sidelines of USC practice. First, let me say that watching practice is immensely valuable (seriously). It informs the questions reporters ask and what we write about.

It also includes lots of time for stretching, water breaks and drills way across the field that we can’t see. We reporters occupy the time by ranking things. This week, we ranked states. Not necessarily the best states to live in or to visit. Just: What’s the best state? We democratically decided on the following:

Yes, I did tweet that photo for the sole purpose of embedding it in this mailbag. One selection was the object of scorn by some. I will not dignify this nonsense by naming the state in question. But it has world-class pizza, bagels and lots of Bruce Springsteen fans.

On to the game rating…

USC vs. Texas excitement rating: 8.5 out of 10. Enjoy!

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zach.helfand@latimes.com

Twitter: @zhelfand

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