His arrival last December, in the midst of the darkest defensive stretch in school history, was hailed as a potential program-saving moment at USC. At UCLA, where he revived a struggling defense in a single season, his departure was viewed as a disastrous setback, only made worse by the destination.
But almost a full year after defensive coordinator D’Anton Lynn traded one side of the crosstown rivalry for the other, reality seems to have settled somewhere in the middle. USC, at 5-5, didn’t suddenly field one of college football’s best defenses with Lynn at the helm.