It was the lowest moment of the season for USC’s young offensive line, a September nadir that seemed certain to linger long after the Trojans returned from their first Big Ten trip. But two months later, as Lincoln Riley looks back to where the tide started to turn for his Trojans front, the coach points, somewhat surprisingly, to that nightmarish afternoon in Ann Arbor.
“Since then,” Riley said Tuesday, “I feel like we’ve been on a pretty steady incline the entire way.”
Of course, there was nowhere for USC’s line to go but up after that 27-24 loss to Michigan.