What-Ifs Loom For USC Football, But Trojans Journey Tells Story

What-ifs will always hover over USC football’s 2016 season, but the highs and lows of the journey tell the true story for the Trojans.

The 2016 USC football team won’t be going to the College Football Playoff. They won’t be Pac-12 Champions, and their team photo won’t be in the media guide 30 years from now.

But they will forever go down as one of the great what-if teams in Trojan history.

Like the 1979 team struggled to do with Stanford, what if the 2016 team finished off Utah?

Like the 1995 team insisted on mixing in Kyle Wachholtz at quarterback before settling on Brad Otton, what if the 2016 team went with Sam Darnold over Max Browne in Week 1?

Like the 2002 team fell victim to a daunting September road slate, what if the 2016 team didn’t play two Top 10 teams in early September?

You could drive yourself crazy obsessing over plays, decisions and misfortunes that stood in the way of the Trojans’ ability to earn silverware.

You can play into the praise from the likes of Colin Cowherd and Kirk Herbstreit about how USC is one of the four best teams at the end of the season. But for all of the agonizing the Trojans will endure on the what-if moments, it’s important not to lose sight of the arc that landed them in the hearts of so many.

They had to fall in order to get up. They had to go through the lows to appreciate the highs.

Without a humbling from Alabama, an undressing from Stanford and a lesson from Utah, USC wouldn’t be here, winners of eight-straight games and arguably the hottest team in college football.

“Those losses we had in September told us who we were and where we needed to get to,” defensive lineman Stevie Tu’ikolovatu said after Saturday’s 45-27 win over Notre Dame.

“Being 9-3, we’re not surprised,” he said. “That’s what our expectations were.”

Going into the season, with a first-time head coach and the nation’s toughest schedule, 9-3 was always going to be considered a reasonably successful season.

But after losing three of their first four games, meeting expectations looked impossible. Football Study Hall gave USC just a two percent chance of finishing 9-3.

If they were going to get there, they needed to find it within themselves — quarterback change wasn’t going to be the only needed fix.

And so it ended up being the simplest maxim of all. Trust.

Trusting in the process. Trusting in each other. Trusting in themselves.

“We told ourselves we’ve got to come to together, really focus and buy into the system,” defensive end Uchenna Nwosu said of a players-only meeting held in September. “We knew this turnaround was coming. We just didn’t know when.”

Head coach Clay Helton was right there with them.

“The biggest thing I kept telling myself was keep poised,” he said. “Don’t panic. Do what you believe in.”

It paid off.

Trust was put in Darnold to lead a downtrodden offense unable to score. Trust was put into a struggling offensive line to open running lanes for Ronald Jones.

Together they trusted the defense. The same defense that was left for dead after allowing three-straight touchdown drives to Utah.

Gone was the collective worrying that each side of the ball was going to burden the other, and in was a team that outscored its opponents by an average of 38 to 17.

Saturday at the Coliseum was the culmination of that trust. With a relatively mediocre offensive performance and a decent but not great outing from the defense, the Trojans trusted their star player, Adoree’ Jackson, who came through with three game-deciding touchdowns.

“This win just solidified the last few weeks that you guys have seen,” linebacker Michael Hutchings said.

As it was in wins over Washington and UCLA, the Trojans made sure they kept finding ways and reasons to win, ultimately reaching the expectations of 9-3.

More from Reign of Troy

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• USC football’s Alijah Vera-Tucker declares for NFL Draft
• USC football adds Xavion Alford as transfer from Texas
• USC Podcast: RoT Radio Ep. 396 on the Football Season’s Fallout
• Talanoa Hufanga named Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Year, USC football with five first-teamers

“What this group and this team has is something special,” Helton said. “Something over my 21 years, I’ll always remember.”

And deep down inside, it’s the teams that aren’t decorated with championships who become remembered for who they truly are.

The 2016 USC football team will be remembered as resilient.

They are a team that won despite their embattled start. They are a team who made believers out of so many non-believers.

Rings and what-ifs be damned, this year’s Trojans didn’t need a title to become a story. They wrote it themselves.