LAS VEGAS — Bowl games, particularly the ones unaffiliated with the College Football Playoff, are suspended in a weird middle ground. Most rosters become so depleted through transfer portal departures and opt-outs by the final days of December that the team that shows up for the bowl doesn’t closely resemble the one that stepped onto the field for the last regular season game.
And that team also usually will not look anything like the team that takes the field for the first game of the next season. Bowl games typically offer a snapshot of a program in transition.
That was the case with USC in the Las Vegas Bowl, but in this instance, the picture was a perfect encapsulation of what the Trojans were all season: somewhere in between flawed and frustrating and good and gritty. Their identity varied from game to game, and even from quarter to quarter.
USC played badly enough to fall into a 17-point second-half hole against Texas A&M. It played well enough to overcome it all for a 35-31 win in one of the wildest and most dramatic bowl games of the season.
“Some ways, kind of a poetic ending to the season, it felt like,” USC head coach Lincoln Riley said. “I told them there’s a toughness and hardness that’s developing within this program right now. I think you can look at a lot different points throughout the season and certainly tonight and you see that.”
It’s wise not to assign overarching narratives to the result of a bowl game. USC tried to push one all last offseason that its 42-28 Holiday Bowl win against Louisville was a stepping stone toward bigger and better things. The Trojans followed that up by dropping from eight wins in 2023 to seven in 2024. USC’s season was going to be viewed as a disappointment no matter what happened on Friday night at Allegiant Stadium.
But it’s totally fine for USC and its fans to feel good about this win. The Trojans are far from perfect. Some weeks they look good enough to compete with some of the best teams in the country, and other weeks they play badly enough to lose to one of the worst teams in the Big Ten.
USC had plenty of opportunities to lay down and roll over for the season. Even though the 6-6 regular season was pretty underwhelming, things could’ve gotten even worse when the Trojans fell to 4-5 with a loss to Washington on Nov. 2. Every loss was competitive — even their 14-point loss to Notre Dame on the final weekend of the regular season was close in the final minutes.
Now, close doesn’t count for much. USC and Riley have to learn from the mistakes of this season and add more talent to this roster. But the Trojans have to find a way to bottle up the perseverance they displayed throughout 2024 and carry it over to next year.
That’s extremely difficult to do in the portal era. But all of what it will take was on display on Friday. Simply put, quarterback Jayden Maiava looked awful through the first three quarters against Texas A&M, playing badly enough to raise serious questions about his long-term outlook as USC’s starter.
His mechanics were off. His accuracy was, too. His poor decision making led to three interceptions. But in the fourth quarter, he made the throws and showed the moxie to lead a 10-play, 79-yard go-ahead drive followed by a 10-play, 75-yard game-winning drive. The fair conversation about his future can be put on hold for another day.
Maiava completed 22 of his 39 pass attempts for 295 yards, four touchdowns and three interceptions. With eight seconds left, he threw the game-winning 7-yard touchdown pass to receiver Kyle Ford, whose college career is another testament to perseverance.
Ford was a five-star prospect in the 2019 recruiting cycle but tore his ACL in his senior season of high school. He signed with USC and made it back to full health for spring practice in 2020 only for the COVID-19 pandemic to shut everything down. Ford tore his ACL again that summer while working out on his own. He was back in 2021 but did not look like the player he was as a recruit. He made some plays down the stretch of the 2022 season but transferred in search of a bigger role. He landed at crosstown rival UCLA and experienced a frustrating 2023 season there.
After coming back to USC this season, here he was, scoring the game-winning touchdown on the final play in the final game of his six-year college journey. Ford dropped to his knees in the end zone after scoring.
“My journey hasn’t been exactly easy,” Ford said. “I thought it was going to be easy from where I was coming out of high school. Just in that moment, everything flooded. The two surgeries, the grinding, being in a bad position, transferring, not getting what I wanted out of it. … It all hit me at once, and it was a cool way to end it off being a Trojan.”
Ford’s receiving corps had taken several hits over the past month with the transfer departures of Zachariah Branch, Duce Robinson and Kyron Hudson. All three players were major parts of the Trojans’ depth chart at the position. That rotation tightened considerably on Friday night, and it worked out for the best. Ford caught six passes for 59 yards and a touchdown, and sophomores Ja’Kobi Lane and Makai Lemon looked like legitimate stars, spearheading USC’s comeback.
Lane had seven receptions for 127 yards and three touchdowns, including a 33-yard catch that set the Trojans up near the goal line on the final drive. This performance comes on the heels of another three-score effort against Notre Dame, which came after he scored the game-winning touchdown against UCLA. Lemon finished with six catches for 99 yards and looked smooth with the ball in his hands as a receiver and returner. Lane and Lemon should be the focal points of USC’s offense in 2025.
USC didn’t have its top two tailbacks for this game: Woody Marks declared for the NFL Draft and Quinten Joyner transferred to Texas Tech. True freshman Bryan Jackson stepped up and carried the ball 16 times for 66 yards and a score. Jackson, who is listed at 6-foot, 230 pounds and wears the No. 21 jersey, is not the next Lendale White, but his running style certainly conjures memories of the bruising Trojans great. Redshirt freshman A’Marion Peterson stepped up with 43 yards on 12 carries as well.
Those two ran behind an offensive line that entered the game missing two starters: center Jonah Monheim, who is off to the NFL, and right tackle Mason Murphy, who is transferring to Auburn. USC was facing an uphill climb with walk-on Kilian O’Connor at center and Tobias Raymond stepping in at right tackle.
It got even messier when left tackle Elijah Paige suffered an apparent left foot injury, which thrust freshman Justin Tauanuu into the lineup. But despite the turnover, the line held up well. The Trojans certainly could target a transfer lineman or two who could compete for a starting role, but their younger players showed some promise on Friday.
It was easy to write off the defense after USC lost linebacker Eric Gentry and defensive lineman Anthony Lucas to various injuries within weeks of each other back in October. But defensive coordinator D’Anton Lynn and his staff maximized the talent that was left and kept USC more than respectable defensively. There were opportunities for the unit to call out sick on Friday night, especially with the bad situations Maiava and the offense were putting them in, but they came up with countless stops to keep the Trojans in the game.
Safeties Kamari Ramsey and Akili Arnold came up with critical interceptions. Linebacker Easton Mascarenas-Arnold came up with a crucial third-down stop. Gentry returned after battling concussions earlier in the season and gave the defense some punch again. He and Ramsey, two of the unit’s best players, will be back in 2025. With Lucas also returning USC will have building blocks to work with at every level of the defense.
Of course, USC has to work in the portal to add more talent to this roster. The offensive line needs help. The defensive line needs a pass rusher. The secondary could use another corner and probably a safety. The receiver rotation will need more bodies. USC probably needs to find a starting quarterback. It can’t let the bowl win mask the very real issues that still exist.
USC wasn’t good enough often enough in 2024, so things have to change. But the grit it displayed week after to week this season is something it should try to carry over into 2025.
“That’s the slogan for USC, ‘Fight On,’” Mascarenas-Arnold said. “I think that was a great, great example (of it) today.”
(Photo: David Becker / Getty Images)