Marcus Freeman and Notre Dame have been a bit behind the eight ball, ever since dropping opening games against Miami and Texas A&M. They've righted the ship -- especially on defense -- and now face their dangerous rival USC in a night game. With Pitt and Navy showing some improvement, I don't want to say this game is for all the marbles, so we'll say this one feels like its for "most of the marbles" with respect to a playoff bid.

After wandering for the better parts of 2023 and 2024, USC has emerged as a top team in 2025 and looks to run the table for a playoff bid of their own. USC and ND are the premier intersectional rivalry in college football and this will be a showcase game on Saturday night.

Coaching

Freeman is 2-1 against Riley and we've spoken a lot about Lincoln Riley's journey at USC. He's currently 31-15 there and 7-6 in Big 10 plan. At this point, Lincoln Riley really isn't much of a mystery. I've said this stuff in the past:

 In my mind, Lincoln Riley has always been a good air raid coach and an excellent quarterbacks coach. His overall system came from time at Texas Tech and featured some nice bolt-ons in the form of a creative screen game and a variety of QB run options suited to whomever he had as his signal caller. With Jalen Hurts, he was able to run some QB power while he mixed in QB counter and sprint outs with Kyler Murray. Baker Mayfield and Caleb Williams were more traditional QBs, but Riley was nonetheless able to find creative ways to get his guy on the move and make big plays in space. Unfortunately for Riley, he’s moved into a competitive environment where this doesn’t work. In his prime, Riley’s only flaws at Oklahoma were an inability to beat the best of the best in the 4 team playoff and his dry brisket. Since moving to the PAC 12 and subsequently the B1G, he’s struggled to get his scheme working against better defenses. Additionally, the drop off in QB play from Williams to Miller Moss has been substantial and Riley has had to throttle down his scheme to a more conventional pro style spread a la Brohm. Overall, Riley’s coached a sensible, sound scheme but he’s lacked the talent necessary to win enough games in a tougher conference – and he hasn’t even had to face the elite squads there. A part of me wonders whether USC and Riley would mutually part ways if he could get back to a Big XII job. Otherwise, Riley’s going to have to continue to reinvent everything that made him successful as a 55-10 coach at Oklahoma. While Riley continues to be a creative coach, unfortunately the 2024 team really isn’t good enough to execute most of his better ideas and he’s had to continue focusing on improving on fundamentals every step of the way.  

Having watched USC a decent amount this year, my feeling is that he's starting to figure out how to innovate a bit more on offense. Riley will always be an air raid coach at his core, but in 2025 he's done a lot to infuse his offensive philosophy with some new juice. One major component of the Trojan offense in 2025 is the use of multiple personnel. You'll see a good amount of split back sets, as well as two tight ends. The USC offense still primarily uses the central tenants of the air raid, except now they're doing a lot more out of fairly unique personnel groupings and formations. While screen plays are central to the Air Raid philosophy, Riley does a really good job of disguising looks and building in screen options on a lot of his plays to take advantage of unsound defensive structures. In particular, Riley loves tunnel and middle screens where he can get athletic OL in space on defenders who are overplaying the threat of a skill player. One interesting dynamic for the 2025 offense is a heavy incorporation of split backs. Maiava doesn't appear to be the same dynamic running threat that Kyler Murray or even Caleb Williams were, so Riley has introduced split backs. This provides a number of attractive features for their offense 1) they can threaten the entire field with the run, 2) they can get lead blocking on runs, 3) it's pretty easy to slide pass pro with a back on either side, 4) both backs can threaten as release valves on screens, flats, or angle routes.

D'Anton Lynn returns as USC's DC. He favors using multiple fronts, anything from 3-4s to a 4-2-5 and just does a good job matching personnel. This year, USC officially claims to be a 4-3 based on their depth chart, which largely has to do with Eric Gentry's designation as a LB (he's 6'6 225 lbs). Lynn spent the better part of last year trying to improve USC down-to-down, but seems to have shifted more towards a Newberry (Navy coach) approach of generating enough big plays and drive enders to enable Riley's offense to lead the way to victory.

After a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth, USC has seemingly returned to form. They've opened the season 5-1. They've delivered beatdowns on poverty programs like Missouri State, Georgia Southern, Purdue, Michigan State, and Michigan but dropped their road contest to Illinois.

By The Numbers

Like a lot of college teams, it's a bit tough to get a true bead on USC as they've played 6 games all against opponents outside of Sagarin's top 25 (Illinois is 26, Michigan is 27).

• Most of the fancy stats like they quite a bit -- #13 in Sagarin and FEI, #9 in FPI.
  
• FEI has them as the #1 overall offense (adjusted for SOS). They're #3 in points/game, #4 in Rush YPC (6.38), and #3 in pass YPA (10.5). For context, FEI has them playing the #27 (Michigan) and #61 (Illinoi) before a major dropoff to #77 (MSU).
  
• Defensively, they aren't so good -- FEI's #67. They've given up 21 ppg (#51). They decent at stopping the run #37 (3.46 YPA) but are poopydooks at stopping the pass #105 (7.8 YPA). They did a solid job bottling up the run against Michigan, holding them to 3.5 YPC but Illinois ran all over them for 171 yards on 35 carries. Their big 10 opponents have all managed better than 7.8 YPA against them, with MSU going for 9.8 and Illinois going for 12.3 and 331 yards. Neither of them are really noted as prolific offenses, either.
  
• They've sort of returned to form with defensive disruptions -- accumulating 7.5 TFL/game and 3.33 sacks/game to match 1.33 interceptions/game.

Overall, this USC team has been victimized heavily on defense by attacks much less prolific than ND's. It's possible they improved defensively during their bye week.

Key Players and Talent

• The obvious key player is start quarterback Jayden Maiava. A hallmark of Lincoln Riley's recipe to success at USC has always been "have a top shelf QB talent". After briefly wandering in the desert with a merely good Miller Moss, Riley seems to have found his new guy. The UNLV transfer took over in 2024 after their second bye and led USC to a 3-1 record including a big Las Vegas Bowl comeback win over Texas A&M. In 2025, he has 1852 yards (10.8 YPA), 13 TDs and only 2 INT. Maiava is much more of a scrambler and will occasionally provide some yardage on the ground. USC is pretty unlikely to run more than a couple designed carries for Maiava. He was something of a nightmare for the Irish, and he used his side and decent speed to get away from the pass rush and make some impressive downfield throws last season. For whatever reason, he looks a little less zippy in terms of running ability this year but he's no less of an overall threat. I'm no NFL scout, but Maiava has all of the traits you look for in a 1st round pick. Although he's not a "generational QB prospect" like Caleb Williams, it seems likely he could go in the back half of the 1st round this spring. He can make layered throws even into tight zone coverage, he sees the field well, and he has good size. He can occasionally be baited into turnover worthy throws by zone coverage. He's the stick that stirs USC. He'll have to play a great game in order for USC to win -- I have a tough time seeing them win without a great performance here. Chris Ash will have his hands full.
• The other player the Irish defensive staff is circling will be WR Makai Lemon who projects as a middle of the 1st round type player. Lemon already has 682 yards on the year and 6 TDs and the USC offense relies on him as a threat to dictate what the defense will do. He already has 5 100+ yard days in his career, to go along with a 99 yard LV Bowl and a 93 yard effort against Michigan. You may recall him having a huge 133 yard effort against us last year. Lemon tends to line up in the slot (85%) and is as big a threat on a screen pass as he is deep.
  
• USC lost some bigger recruiting stars at WR in Duce Robinson and Zachariah Branch, so they turn to Ja'Kobi Lane and Tanook Hines as their outside guys in 11 personnel. Lane is plenty dangerous in his own right with multiple 100 yard games. They tend to feed him short (0-9 yards). Hines is still a freshman, so USC often turns to other options.
  
• The Trojans have a pair of good TEs in Lake McRee and Walker Lyons. McRee  is coming into his own as a TE and has provided a number of big catches particularly against Illinois. They tend to utilize Lyons more for his blocking but he can certainly make some catches.
• A major story line for USC is running back, as the Trojans will be without two of their better rushers in Waymond Jordan and Eli Sanders. USC will have to turn to walk-on King Willer who had 150 yards against Michigan. Without some of their top backs, I'm not clear whether USC will be in a good position to run their favored split back sets. This will be something to keep an eye on. Miller played very well against Michigan.
  
• USC's OL has returned to form and is allowing very few TFLs and Sacks.
• USC's defense has some nice players, including Anthony Lucas, Kamari Ramsey, and Braylan Shelby who all look to go in the NFL draft. LB/S Eric Gentry is their leading disruptor with 7 TFL. DT Devan Thompkins gave Michigan fits all day and recorded 2 sacks.

The Matchup

Lincoln Riley has never really left behind his Air Raid/OC origins and only occasionally finds ways to win when his team isn't lighting up the scoreboard or piling up huge amounts of yardage. The good news for ND is that it can likely find a way to win in a track meet, should things come down to it. The other good news is that USC has only faced one other serious defense thus far. Michigan came out in some weird 5-2 looks which Maiava easily dissected with quick game and screens. Despite that, they held USC to 24 points until a "camel's backbreaker" TD really late in the game pushed the score to 31-13. USC is also something of a different team when they travel. Chris Ash's unit has been playing really good football and has had the benefit the last 3 weeks of facing some interesting challenges that likely prepare the squad for USC. While USC has a lot of ways to hurt you, the good news is that most of the defense knows what it's like to go up against the best already. Lemon and Maiava are particularly fantastic players, but this offense is no OSU. Overall, my feeling is that USC has to play a great game offensively to have a shot at winning and the good news is that ND has some clubs in its bag to give them trouble.

If I have major concerns for this game, it's the offense bogging down in short yardage situations and/or making enough uncharacteristic mistakes to lose. While ND sports a 4-2 record, they have yet to demonstrate the ability to perform close-and-late and it's certainly possible this team hasn't "learned how to win" or "lacks the clutch gene" when the lights are the brightest. Still, CJ Carr in particular has demonstrated he's a quick learner so my hope would be he'd perform well in his third major bite at the apple. While USC's defense has some athleticism and put up a nice game against Michigan, they've yet to establish themselves with consistency. Their defense doesn't play great football whistle-to-whistle and ND should have plenty of opportunities to score.

In the end, this game might just come down to home field advantage. USC's last win in South Bend was the 2011 game and they simply haven't played well here outside of the Carroll Era. USC struggled on the road to a decent Illinois team (that got wrecked by Indiana). My gut tells me that the 7.5 point spread (and rising) feels generous for the Irish, but at the same time it feels like USC just played an "up game" at home against Michigan. They were lucky to be close against Illinois who made some critical mistakes to keep USC in the game.

This game feels spooky but USC is hardly the first high-powered offense to roll into town against ND. I like ND's chance to win but am also pre-coping myself that this could be a great development season even at 3 losses.

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Freeman's got so much riz they need to call him Aura Parseghian