The tape played on loop all week in Notre Dame’s facility, a sobering reminder for the Irish two years later of what USC, under Lincoln Riley, could be when everything was working in concert. A superhero at quarterback. A rolling run game. A ferocious front. That dominant win over Notre Dame, in the final week of the 2022 season, had in many ways been the high-water mark of the coach’s Trojan tenure, the sort of major moment that would seemingly propel a program to new heights.
The two years since have been spent chasing that feeling, as one frustrating season bled into another, with USC never quite able to meet that moment, stumbling its way to Saturday when the Trojans had a chance to, ever so briefly, glimpse that magic again.