USC coach Lincoln Riley watches a replay during the team’s 52-42 loss to Washington at Coliseum on Nov. 4. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
The toughest year of Lincoln Riley’s otherwise charmed coaching life felt, in a lot of ways, painfully similar to this one. It was 2011, his second season as East Carolina’s offensive coordinator and nothing seemed to be going his or the Pirates’ way.
Injuries struck early. Each week seemed to bring a new bad break. Frustrations snowballed. East Carolina lost four of five games to start the season, then finished by losing three of four to miss a bowl game for the first time in six years.
It wasn’t the way Riley envisioned the second year of his tenure as an offensive wunderkind. He was just 28, the youngest coordinator in college football at the time. Since joining Mike Leach’s Texas Tech staff in 2003 as a student assistant, Riley had never finished below .500 as a football coach.
“I’d never been through anything like that,” Riley said. “I was kind of down in the dumps for a little while, honestly.”
Read more: Caleb Williams, USC effectively eliminated from Pac-12 title race with loss to Oregon
Out of that disappointment, however, came perspective Riley could draw on a dozen years later, as USC enters the final week of a frustrating season during which the Trojans have dropped four of their last five. With UCLA on tap during its regular-season finale Saturday, USC isn’t in danger of finishing below .500 as Riley did in 2011, but at 7-4, it has definitely fallen well short of expectations, a fact that might’ve sent a younger Riley down a dark path.
Not so much the 40-year-old version.
“I rode the emotional roller coaster as a [younger] coach,” Riley said. “Now, I stay a little more even-keeled. I know what the good is. I know what the bad is. I know what…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/lincoln-rileys-past-taught-him-040824879.html
Author : LA Times
Publish date : 2023-11-15 04:08:24
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