The Wrap: ‘Cardiac Kids’ was fun — until it wasn’t
On Friday afternoon, USC was preparing for the Pac-12 Championship Game, hoping for a conference title and automatic bid to the Fiesta Bowl, still with a non-zero chance at cracking the College Football Playoff.
On Saturday evening, USC’s season had ended with the most bitter of tastes in the mouths of Trojan fans everywhere.
Ah, how fast the fall from grace.
As disappointing as this season was — and as utterly catastrophic the conclusion — I’m not going to lie: I’ll miss this group of players.
Forget the coaches for a moment. Forget the sloppiness and indiscipline on that fateful Friday night. Forget the fact that the Trojans fell short of expectations again (I’ll get to all that later, I promise).
In this alternate reality that is 2020 and the 2020 college football season, in a year that means little from a competitive standpoint, it was fine to have a little thrill. Let’s be totally honest: The College Football Playoff was just about doomed for USC when the Pac-12 settled on a seven-game schedule, and the cancellation against Colorado was the nail in the coffin. USC could have gone undefeated and won each game by a single point, and it would’ve ended up in the same place as if it had won each by 30.
Let me be clear: I wanted Alabama-against-literally-every-other-team-type blowouts. I wanted USC to show that it’s not light years from competing with the nation’s best in 2021 and beyond. But if there was any year when we welcomed a little raising of the hair on the back of our necks, it was this one.
USC’s miraculous comebacks — except for the Arizona game, which brought me perhaps more agony than any other win the last three years because, damn it, it’s Arizona — were fun. The Arizona State game was fun. The UCLA game was fun. They were thrilling.
When USC opted out of a bowl game, though I’d argue it was the right move for a variety of reasons (DM me on Twitter if you so passionately disagree, I welcome the smoke), part of me was disappointed we won’t get to watch these players together again. They played with energy. They were cohesive. They were fun. The games were fun.
Until they weren’t.
And herein lies the problem. When the clock expired on USC’s attempt to pull off yet another comeback against Oregon in the Pac-12 Championship Game Friday, it served as a reality check. As the Trojans’ luck finally ran out, so too did the pretense that USC can return to elite status under the current leadership. Something has to change.
USC’s furious late rallies were made possible because of its playmakers. Without them, the 5-0 record through five games could have easily been 2-3. The “Cardiac Kids” mantra was so fitting because the comebacks were to the credit of the kids, not the adults.
In the long run, Trojan fans don’t want the Cardiac Kids. They don’t want miracle comebacks. They want dominance. They want to stomp other teams’ faces in.
USC’s first loss of the season was accompanied, naturally, by its shortest postgame press conference of the year, and it made sense — what more needed to be said?
Still, in those 11 minutes and 24 seconds, minus a few ticks on the bookends of the Zoom recording, it became evident multiple times that beyond Helton being a subpar football coach, he just simply doesn’t get it.
“We’re judged on championships here,” Helton said. “That’s the expectation, that’s the standard, that’s what we fight for.”
What Helton was referring to is, of course, Pac-12 Championships. And he was half right. That is the expectation. It’s not at all what USC is judged on.
If the Trojans had taken care of Oregon Friday night, would anybody have said that this program is finally where it needed to be? Would anybody have been convinced?
In a conference that’s the weakest it’s been in years and in a season where USC had a cakewalk to the Pac-12 title game, a Pac-12 Championship would not have defined an excellent season. Save that moniker for a Fiesta Bowl win or a Top-10 finish in the final rankings. The conference championship should have been a given this year. The bar is much higher. But it still didn’t happen.
And please: Don’t give me the “but Covid” excuse.
News flash: There’s a pandemic for every single college football team, and there’s a pandemic for every program in the Pac-12, too — not just USC. Remember that cakewalk to the Pac-12 title game I referenced? Coronavirus cancellations in the conference turned that cake from a hastily-assembled Safeway pastry to a quadruple-layer dessert of wedding-sized proportions.
Let’s go through the schedule, shall we?
USC’s first three games of the season were against teams playing their season-opener, including the middle of those three games against quite possibly the worst team in football — college, high school or flag. USC’s fourth game of the season was against a bad Washington State team which hadn’t played in 22 days due to a coronavirus outbreak. The fifth scheduled game, against Colorado — the second best team in the Pac-12 South — was canceled. The sixth game was against a UCLA team that was fine, and nothing more.
Then, in the Pac-12 Championship Game, the most talented USC team in the three years I’ve attended this higher learning institution faced off with the least talented Oregon team in that same timespan. It was an Oregon team that didn’t even win its own division — or, hell, its own state, if the Beavers have anything to say about it.
Helton still couldn’t get it done. His bar was low, and USC went lower.
But the Helton-indicting quotes from the milquetoast press conference didn’t stop there. These words, courtesy of redshirt junior safety Isaiah Pola-Mao:
“Coach always says, ‘When emotions go up, intelligence goes down.’”
He does? Wonderful! At least he acknowledges it. But what has he done about it? It’s Helton’s job to reel those emotions in and instill discipline, to make sure that when emotions go up, it’s not at the cost of intelligence. Nine penalties for 98 yards in the biggest game of the season doesn’t quite cut it.
(Side note now that we’re on the subject: How many big games have the Trojans won in the post-Sam Darnold era? I count a measly one: Utah in 2019. That’s it.)
Am I absolving USC’s current players of all blame for the Trojans’ loss to Oregon? Absolutely not. Sophomore quarterback Kedon Slovis looked awful, and this time, that continued into the fourth quarter. USC’s offensive line is probably seeing Oregon’s front seven in its nightmares. On designed runs, the Trojans ran the ball 25 times for 65 yards the entire game. That is horrendous, and I would like to fire the Air Raid into the sun.
But that doesn’t mean Helton is exempt.
You only get so many offensive and defensive coordinators, so many cornerbacks coaches, so many athletic directors, even. Helton has had multiple of each, and USC is still nowhere near where it needs to be.
There’s one common denominator.
Helton is a great guy. He really is a phenomenal person. But sometimes, the most necessary moves are the most difficult ones to make. And he’s just not the right fit here.
So once again, here’s to the Cardiac Kids. But it should never have come to that.
Nathan Ackerman is a junior writing about USC football. He is also an associate managing editor of the Daily Trojan. His column, “The Wrap,” ran every Monday during football season.