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LINCOLN, Neb. — During the two weeks since USC’s deflating defeat at Notre Dame, Lincoln Riley reiterated the same rallying cry with his team. Their destiny, he told them, was still in their hands. A special season was still within reach. A College Football Playoff run was still in play.
All it would take was his Trojans putting the past behind them and playing their best football.
But that’s not what happened Saturday. After two weeks preparing to put their best foot forward, USC put together one of its least impressive efforts of the season. Its offense was out of sorts. Its defense was run over on the ground. And yet still, in spite of it all, the Trojans managed to escape with a 21-17 victory.
It was the Trojans’ second true road win outside of L.A. since October 2023. And boy did they need it — for reasons beyond their thin playoff dreams.
“You have to win some of these like this,” Riley said after. “As this program continues to ascend, the more you win these in different types of ways, the more the confidence of everybody [grows].”
No one wearing cardinal and gold looked all the confident for the better part of three quarters Saturday. Not as a sellout crowd clad entirely in black roared through the night with every USC misstep.
Jayden Maiava, who entered the game third in the nation in passing yards per game, was out of sync from the start. The Trojans’ top receivers were held totally in check. As a result, USC was left to rely solely on walk-on running back King Miller to keep the offense moving for most of the game.
Miller answered the call as best he could, rushing for 129 yards in 18 carries. And in the fourth quarter, after Nebraska’s offense had ground to a halt, it was Miller who punched in the go-ahead touchdown.
King and Kaylon Miller celebrated earning preferred walk-on offers they got from USC, believing they could play if they just got a chance to join the team.
But it would take a fortunate sequence of events for USC to even end up in that position, starting first with a 43-yard flea flicker to Tanook Hines downfield. A few plays later, a controversial pass interference call brought them within striking distance for Miller to give the Trojans their first lead of the night.
For Maiava, the flea flicker was one of his few notable passes all night. He managed to complete just nine of 23 for 135 yards. He also threw an interception.
“You play quarterback long enough, there’s going to be games like this, when things are a little bit out of whack and your ability to hang in there and keep swinging,” Riley said. “Find a way to make plays, that’s what the really good ones do,”
But even Maiava knew full well how USC escaped with a victory.
“Defense did a hell of a job,” Maiava said. “They’re the reason why we got this win.”
It wasn’t a flawless effort from the defense, which still allowed Nebraska running back Emmett Johnson to rack up 165 yards in 29 carries. But the rest of the Huskers offense only managed 121 total yards.
The defense did its best work in the second half, giving Maiava and the offense the time it needed to climb back.
Though, it didn’t hurt that Nebraska was without starting quarterback Dylan Raiola, who missed the final two quarters with an injury. In his place, freshman TJ Lateef managed just seven passing yards.
USC coach Lincoln Riley and his players are confident they can still make a College Football Playoff run despite an ugly loss at Notre Dame.
But it was a wonder by that point that USC was even in position to climb back.
Nebraska set the tone early by letting Johnson get rolling, and he responded by busting through tackle after tackle. After USC opened with a three-and-out, Nebraska held the ball for seven minutes and 14 plays on its first drive by Johnson, before Raiola threw a third-down touchdown pass to take an early lead.
Meanwhile, the Trojans didn’t earn a first down until their third drive of the night. Miller was able to find some running room after that, rushing for 49 yards on a single drive. But just as Miller seemed to find momentum, USC turned away from the run.
With a first down inside the 10-yard line, Riley called three straight pass plays. Then, on the doorstep of a score, USC committed a false start on fourth and short. It ended up settling for a 27-yard field goal.
It was an especially uncharacteristic first half for an offense that came into Saturday averaging more yards than any other team in college football. Another field goal was all the Trojans could muster for the rest of the first half. It was the first time since their loss to Michigan last September that they couldn’t manage at least one first-half touchdown.
“Against a good defense, on a night like this, you definitely don’t want to make your job harder,” Riley said. “And we did that.”
The Trojans’ top passing attack was completely grounded before halftime, as Maiava managed a meager 57 yards on six-of-16 passing. Miller proved to be the Trojans’ only reliable source of first-half offense, piling up 82 of his 129 yards.
Halftime wouldn’t help matters much. On his first pass of the second half, Maiava threw a pass directly to a Nebraska defender that was easily intercepted.
USC’s defense offset Maiava’s mistake by forcing Nebraska’s quarterback to fumble a few plays later. But the Trojans were quickly stuffed on a fourth and short near midfield.
Trading second-half mistakes, Nebraska missed a field goal to put the ball back in Maiava’s hands. This time, the Trojans’ quarterback used his legs to make Nebraska pay, stiff-arming his way to a 16-yard keeper for a score. A two-point conversion tied it.
Miller would push USC in front on the Trojans’ very next possession. His score gave the ball back to Nebraska with over three minutes remaining — plenty of time to mount a winning drive.
But on that final possession, USC’s defense would actually live up to Riley’s rallying cry from earlier in the week. Putting all its past late-game road woes behind it, the Trojans’ defense left no doubt as it put the finishing touches on Nebraska.
“It was big for us to come out there and be one as a unit,” said defensive end Kameryn Crawford.
With Nebraska facing a fourth and one, the Huskers handed it off to Johnson with the game on the line. And he tripped.
It was a fitting way to end an otherwise unseemly performance. But for USC, all that mattered was the end result — and the fact that, for one week at least, their hopes for something more were still very much intact.
