USC Now mailbag: It’s all about the Trojans’ future

Nothing fills up an in box quite like a USC loss to rival Notre Dame.

Without further adieu, this week’s mailbag.

Can anybody explain to me how these coaches are still with the team? Gosh, do something even if it’s midseason with Pat Haden. You are going to lose games because of defensive and offensive play-calling with these coaches. Both Clay Helton and Justin Wilcox may be nice people, but cannot coach this team. It is time move them out. How many people agree?

— Edward Aguilar

Did you want to step in and coach, Edward?

An entire staff cannot be fired midway through the season.

Permanent replacements can’t be found in October and there’s little chance a team would perform under a pieced-together interim staff.

When USC hires its head coach, he will determine which current staff members will be retained.

Keeping the staff together is the surest way to help the team succeed in its remaining six games.

I predict that USC will lose every game the rest of the season. Their program is a shambles. The arrogant and fickle USC alumni will desert the team in droves and quit attending games and donating money.

— Robert Price, Walnut

USC won’t lose every game remaining on its schedule: Utah, California, Arizona Colorado, Oregon and UCLA.

Utah on Saturday will be a challenge. The Utes are undefeated and play a bruising brand of football.

My prediction is that USC will lose against Utah, at Oregon and against UCLA.

However, California looked less than impressive against the Bruins on Thursday night and Arizona and Colorado also should be teams the Trojans can defeat.

Arizona is 5-2 and Colorado is 3-4.

Do you think the first game Clay Helton coaches is really a deciding factor if he is hired? Wouldn’t how a team progresses under him be considered more?

— Steven White

Clay Helton’s first game as coach of USC, a loss to Notre Dame, won’t be the lone deciding factor, but it will be taken into consideration in the hiring process.

Ed Orgeron was 6-2 as interim coach in 2013. The team improved under his direction and played hard through the remainder of the season. However, his two losses were to rivals Notre Dame and UCLA — and he was not offered the permanent job.

Helton will make a good head coach, it just might not be at USC.

Let’s look at the last three successful coaches USC had. John McKay and John Robinson were assistant coaches with no head coaching experience. Pete Carroll was an NFL reject.

— Dick Reed

Pete Carroll was an anomaly of a hire as a twice-failed NFL coach.

Trying to forge the same path for the next hire would be a mistake.

Most coaches who are fired twice and have no previous success as a college head coach don’t go on to win two Associated Press national championships.

There might not ever be another coach like Carroll.

What are your thoughts about Butch Davis as a possibility for the head coaching job at USC? Butch Davis has certainly shown in the past that he can recruit and coach on the collegiate level. Although he was forced to leave North Carolina due to the fact that he had some players accept benefits from a sports agent, it was never established that he had any involvement or knowledge of the actions of the involved players. It certainly seems that the possibilities for success would be much greater at USC than at Miami or North Carolina.

— Hunter Kitchens

The NCAA investigated North Carolina’s program in 2011 and it led to Butch Davis being fired.

That sounds familiar.

The NCAA investigated USC’s program and that led to years of sanctions and reduced scholarships.

USC athletic officials still site sanctions as a reason why the program remains in turmoil. No way would they hire a head coach who recently was terminated due to NCAA violations.

You should not have cited USC’s two pass-interference penalties as examples of penalty-prone play the Trojans must avoid. In both cases, the penalties prevented much longer gains that Notre Dame would have achieved if open receivers had not been prevented from catching the passes thrown to them. You certainly can be critical of the pass coverage in those two instances. However, no knowledgeable observer would point to those two penalties as being indicative of a penalty problem.

— Gerry Swider

Interesting observation, Gerry.

When writing the live game blog, I wrote that Kevon Seymour’s pass-interference penalty was a good play — it saved USC a touchdown.

Then I hit delete.

On the next play Adoree’ Jackson was called for pass interference. That’s 30 yards they gave a sophomore quarterback in a 70-yard touchdown drive.

Seymour and Jackson should have the ability to play defense without committing penalties to prevent long gains.

Eight other penalties, including five by the offensive line, also contributed to the glaring issue.

Questions or comments about USC? Email me at LNThiry@gmail.com or tweet @LindseyThiry and I will respond to select messages in a weekly USC Now mailbag.