If Snoop Dogg asks “what u smoking” — with some emojis to boot — I fear we may have a problem. You best grab a life vest, Lincoln.

At least, since Snoop Dogg’s asking, we know it ain’t weed!

If you haven’t yet guessed or aren’t chronically in the USC football (5-2, 3-1 Big Ten) realm of X, I am not accusing Head Coach Lincoln Riley of doing hard drugs. Nor is Snoop, for the record — though I don’t know if even that would’ve justified a few of the play calls in Saturday’s 34-24 loss to longtime rival No. 12 Notre Dame (5-2).

Just a week after the Trojans took home one of their biggest wins in recent memory against then-No. 15 Michigan, is this really enough to bring up firing yet again? If you ask anyone looking at USC’s past or angry fans who sat in the patented South Bend rain and lightning to watch their team lose, they’d say yes.

Good thing I’m not one for looking back.

Before the season, the Los Angeles Times’ most-revered sports columnist, Bill Plaschke, argued Riley embodied a sense of mediocrity he said plagued USC football, specifically saying they were no longer on the level to compete with “Ohio State, Michigan, Texas, Georgia and Clemson.”

Ohio State, fair. Georgia, fair. Texas … I don’t know, man. Michigan, USC smacked. Clemson, well, just sucks.

Now, this is not me saying a man making almost $11.5 million a year shouldn’t be expected in the top tier of college football teams, but this begs the question: When was the last time USC was truly outclassed? I’d argue UCLA in 2023, or perhaps the last time the Trojans traveled to South Bend. Note that those two examples were both before USC joined the Big Ten two years ago.

Closing big games is what separates a good coach from a great one, and Riley is surely no Pete Carroll. But who is? That guy has more energy at 74 years old watching paint dry or teaching a class at USC than I have at 19 after a couple of Monsters in the middle of the afternoon. But it’s certainly hard to ignore the numbers.

While Carroll’s first season at USC was worse record-wise than any of Riley’s seasons so far, two of which came in the more difficult Big Ten, the Trojan legend went on to win at least 11 games in each of the next seven seasons before going 9-4 and leaving for the NFL. Though Riley did win 11 games in his first season with USC, it’s hard to overlook losses to middling programs like Maryland and Minnesota last year, or consistently losing rivalry games against Utah and Notre Dame as of late.

The Trojans are 5-11 against Associated Press Top 25 teams under Riley and have lost another five games combined, many of which came by one score or last-minute collapses. To me, one thing has become clear: Riley isn’t the playcaller we have been told he is — something he even seemingly admitted.

“Stupid call,” he said twice after Saturday’s loss about one of his play calls.

While that call — a needless trick play while down 3 points early in the fourth quarter, resulting in a near-game-ending fumble — has been the most talked-about blunder placed fairly and squarely on Riley’s shoulders, I’m here to talk about a few others.

Taking redshirt junior quarterback Jayden Maiava off the field for freshman Husan Longstreet, only to run the most obvious wildcat keeper I’ve ever seen, is certainly a choice. My good friend associate managing editor Nicholas Corral — who learned basic football for the first time last week to help me cover the Michigan game — could’ve seen the call coming a mile away.

Longstreet went for 0 yards. Shocker.

To make matters worse, the call came on second-and-goal from the 7-yard line, in a critical spot before the end of the first half. Had USC scored a touchdown rather than a field goal there, it would have gone into the half with a lead, and the complexion of the game changes.

Just behind that are two fourth-down passing plays that were nowhere near competitive. With a Seattle Seahawks fan for a father, it was like watching Malcolm Butler on repeat.

“[I] didn’t put our guys in very good positions,” Riley said after the game.

He clocked it.

Looking back on his calls after practice Tuesday, Riley said he always calls what he thinks is best, and preached his biggest takeaway: “You can’t be scared.”

“You’ve got to call what you believe is best in the moment, not what fans think or announcers think or anybody else,” Riley said. “Now there’s a difference between not having fear and not making dumb calls.”

To this point, I have been more than a bit negative about Riley, but I think it’s unfair to talk about his weaknesses without his strengths.

Various Trojans have consistently talked about this team as the most tight-knit they’ve seen. That could just be good media training, but after covering this team for just a couple of months, I think I can figure that one out. Not just that, but Riley’s players believe too, even when a lot of others don’t.

“I got a ton of confidence,” Maiava said when asked about Riley’s playcalling after practice Tuesday. “I mean, it’s Lincoln Riley, so I don’t think anybody doubts his play calling.”

Riley’s system has made Maiava look like one of the best players in college football for simply getting the ball to some explosive skill players in space, hitting a wide-open tight end up the middle and making an occasional deep throw. Even without his top-two running backs, Riley’s offense still performed quite well outside of the turnovers.

And you can’t blame him completely for Defensive Coordinator D’Anton Lynn’s struggles, right? For all the buzz about Lynn leaving for UCLA around a month ago, the defense has struggled to play consistently, especially against good opponents like Fighting Irish junior running back Jeremiyah Love.

Love has earned comparisons to prime Adrian Peterson, Barry Sanders or Jim Brown for his dismantling of USC’s defense — I saw more Tecmo Bowl Bo Jackson myself, but I think we’re all on pretty much the same page.

Though, like my friend and former Editor-in-Chief Stefano Fendrich argued in a column last year, we can’t let Riley off the hook for everything. He did bring Lynn and many others in after all.

But we’re still waiting for this mythical 2026 class, where we’ll truly see Riley’s potential with a healthier Jahkeem Stewart on the defensive line, fully matured Maiava or hotshot Longstreet, and a plethora of incoming recruits.

After my last column with a neutral-ish stance ended up being entirely wrong — sorry soccer — I’d feel weird not offering a stable conclusion here, so I’ll leave with this: It’d be a mistake to fire Riley this year barring utter catastrophe — something worse than a loss to No. 6 Oregon (6-1, 3-1)  and a competitive bowl loss — but it’d be a mistake to say he’s proven himself in the long term, too.

Firing a coach will almost always result in struggle; we can’t all be UCLA (3-4, 3-1) interim Head Coach Tim Skipper or Assistant Head Coach Jerry Neuheisel — nor do we all want to be. We’ll see that fizzle out soon enough, from a non-biased source, of course.

Sean Campbell is a sophomore writing about all facets of USC sports in a voice and reference heavy style in his column “A Wannabe Sports Writer,” which runs every other Wednesday. He is also a sports editor at the Daily Trojan.