For the second straight year, USC suffered its first loss of the season to Washington, 32-31, on the sure foot of kicker Erik Folk.
Two years in a row, the clock runs down to three seconds, Folk lines up for a 30-some yarder, it’s up and it’s good for the win.
This time, it wasn’t as unexpected. If Steve Sarkisian could coach his team to a narrow win over his mentor, Pete Carroll, last year, certainly he could do the same against former colleague Lane Kiffin and a Trojans squad depleted by transfers and injuries. And this year, the Huskies were even more dangerous because they’d already beaten the Trojans once, and they knew they could do it again.
From the first drive, the Trojans were out to prove otherwise. Allen Bradford’s 37 yard touchdown run set the tone for the rest of the night, in which he had a career-high 223 rushing yards with two touchdowns. The Huskies defense struggled against him all night, creating enormous holes and giving him plenty of room to run.
USC had its own problems on defense, and the biggest one was QB Jake Locker. Locker threw for 310 yards and rushed for another 100, despite briefly leaving the game after taking a knee to the head during a quarterback sneak at the goal line. (His stand-in, freshman Keith Prince, promptly took a snap and threw a touchdown.)
The most important yards Locker gained the entire game came with just a few minutes left, on 4th down and one. Thanks to bad throws and butterfingered receivers, Locker was facing a turnover on downs that would give the Trojans the ball and the chance to run down the clock and cling to a one-point win. Instead, he moved around in the pocket to avoid pressure and hit D’Andre Goodwin for 24 yards to extend the drive. From there, it was up to running back Chis Polk to get great field position for Folk to kick another game-winning field goal. Mission accomplished.
Washington did everything it needed to do to stick it out and fight for the win. And USC didn’t do enough.
Washington’s receivers – when they actually caught the ball – took all the extra yards they could get; tackling is still an elusive concept for the Trojans. The touchdown from the backup, Prince, came at the end of a long drive that should’ve ended with a sack at midfield, but Locker stayed on his feet and completed one of his best passes of the night.
Too many of his passes were incomplete – either thrown inaccurately, about a foot beyond the grasp of a wide open receiver, or thrown perfectly and dropped like a hot potato. Jermaine Kearse, the team’s receiving leader, dropped two on the final drive alone, but the Huskies never gave up.
It seemed like Lane Kiffin did. As time ran down, he held onto to all three timeouts until just three seconds were left on the clock and the Huskies were well within field goal range, essentially leaving the fate of the game up to Folk’s kicking foot. When Kiffin tried the old ice-the-kicker tactic, he only used the first two timeouts. Would throwing that third one out have made a difference? Likely not, but if you’re going to play that game, you have to go all in.
And you have to play smart, which Kiffin didn’t do.
When the Trojans had 3rd down and 4 at the Huskies 23 with about four minutes left, Kiffin brought on the field goal unit for a 40-yard field goal. Not surprisingly, Joe Houston missed it. Houston was a walk-on until this season, he’s only made three of eight tries, and it was outside of his comfortable range.
Allen Bradford, on the other hand, ran for 39 yards and two first downs on that drive alone. The Huskies didn’t have an answer for him all night, and had Kiffin continued to give him the ball, Folk likely would not have had the chance to play the hero for the second year in a row.
Instead, Houston missed his kick, Folk made his, and USC got its first loss on the year.
The question now is how to regroup. Last season, after the loss to Washington, USC continued to slide to a 9-4 record and a new coach. Next week, the Trojans visit Stanford to begin a brutal stretch of conference games – and not one of them looks to be an easy win. Lane Kiffin will need to make better calls and keep his team from giving up, before USC gives up on him.
