USC’s passing game has been on fire through two weeks. The run game, though, is still waiting to catch up.
That imbalance has left Lincoln Riley with a clear priority as the Trojans head into another lopsided matchup, and he didn’t dress it up on Tuesday. After two games, USC sits at 753 passing yards, tops in the FBS by a wide margin, while the ground attack has stalled at 152.0 yards per game, good for No. 76 nationally. The contrast is stark: USC is more than 200 yards behind Big Ten rushing leader Maryland at 365.0, and more than 400 yards behind national leader Army at 569.0.
The aerial numbers have been eye-catching from the jump. USC became the first FBS team since at least 1996 to throw for 400 yards and complete at least 93 percent of its passes in a game. In the 39-0 win over Fresno State, 13 different Trojans caught a pass, and USC quarterbacks connected on completions of at least 20 yards to five different players.
The run game has been productive enough to keep moving the offense, but Riley said the Trojans have left bigger plays on the field.
"There's not one thing," Riley said. "We've done the majority things pretty well, but we seem to have had just some small breakdowns here and there. Whether it's not leveraging a block correctly, missing a cut, I put us in bad situations at least twice the other night, we've just had small breakdowns.
"They've been some in the core in terms of the at-the-point blockers. Some have been the back.
Some of them have been on the perimeter. Some of them have been a couple of bad calls I put us in.
We've all taken our turns, and with that, we've still been productive, but we've missed some opportunities for explosives that we certainly want to have in the run game. So we got to all be a little bit better.
There's not one unit that they've been terrible, but we need everybody to be a little bit better, and that's a big focus point this week."
Riley also tied the issue to trust, a theme that has surfaced on both sides of the ball. After Friday night’s win, he said the defense looked much better when it stuck to the plan and much worse when it drifted away from it.
"You turn on the film, and when we trusted and did what we were coached to do, [San Jose State] didn't move the ball last week. Then when you turn on the film and the times that we got out of that, we didn't have success."
He said Tuesday that the same thing has shown up in the rushing attack, especially with some of USC’s newer players.
"There's some of that, especially with some of our new players," Riley said. "The offensive guys have the benefit of they've been in this system, especially the returners here for a while. So for those guys, it's a little bit less that, and the fact that we got to be sharp on the details, and also one little breakdown can be the difference between an eight-yard run and a 40-yard run, and that's what we've seen.
"I can't tell you how many in the first two games we watch it and we're just like, 'Oh my god, that was like a shoestring away.' That was just one little thing away from being an explosive one, and instead it's seven yards.
Seven's not bad, but when we get an opportunity to hit a home run, we wouldn't mind putting it over the fence too. So our guys are very aware of that right now.
I'll put it that way. We got to take some steps there."
For USC, the encouraging part is that the team has been willing to own the mistakes out loud. Riley did it after the defense’s rough fourth quarter in the opener.
Maiava also acknowledged his red-zone miss in the first game. Now the run game has become the next area under the microscope, and it remains a point of emphasis this week.
The Trojans have two more games where they should be heavily favored, beginning with Louisiana’s late-night trip to Los Angeles as a 29-point underdog. Riley made it plain that the rushing attack is the part of the offense getting the most attention right now, and USC will look to keep stacking the kind of early-season progress it has shown so far in 2026.
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