Wide receiver Steven Mitchell tore his ACL and will miss the rest of the season. With Mitchell out, Deontay Burnett and Jalen Greene will replace him at wide receiver, Clay Helton said
Clay Helton complimented Sam Darnold for keeping his eyes downfield while scrambling such as the play where he threw a TD pass to Deontay Burnett.
Helton said USC got “handsy” with some of the defensive penalties.
Helton on Pac-12 staging a game that was 137 degrees on the field.
“You gotta have total faith in the conference. They’re always worried about the safety of the players. I have total faith in the conference to take care of the health of our players.”
Did you expect a controversial answer to that?
That sucks. I’m a big Mitchell fan. Too bad for him. Helton’a being very PC when talking about crappy start-times in AZ. And that’s what he has to do. Best of luck to Steven.
Interesting that Cody Kessler has great game and nothing from the blogger who is striving to make USC great again.
#makeuscgreatagain
Certainly not a part of Flow’s agenda.
He plays for a bad team.Poor OL and a very poor D.He’s putting up excellent numbers,better each week.Yesterday what 300+ yrds and no int.? He has proven he was worth every $$. His draft position was spot on and a HUGE credit to USC..SW had What? Dozen plus negative posts blasting the Brown’s and Kessler.
For an ounce of credibility,a HUGE omission of fault should be posted.We know that’s a cold day in Hello..
‘If’ WA goes all the way i.e. 13 – 0 and then rolls into the final in January down in Tampa how much will that stunt by Haden be deemed as detonating to USC’s future?
Swann had best watch WA and start looking for someone with the equal skill.
I agree. Somebody who has the skill of a Chris Petersen. If you can get a Tom Herman then go for it. But otherwise, I want to see what this coaching staff is going to do in the rest of the season. I would never have hired CH. Too much of a learner on the job. But he is learning. So is Tee Martin. He’s calling plays a lot better than he was at the start. In the last 3 and even 4 games, this team has played better than I’ve seen them play in a number of years. They are starting to dominate. Let’s see how this year turns out. Sometimes these assistants hires work out. Guys like Bob Stoopes, Gary Patterson, Dabbo Sweeney, Jimbo Fisher, John Robinson, John McKay, Tom Herman, David Shaw, Kyle Whittingham and many more were assistants when they were hired. Do I want a proven winner? Yes! But it has to be a proven winner. Guys like Chip Kelly were once winners but coaches can lose their confidence. If we win all the rest of our games and take Washington right down to the wire, I’d consider keeping these guys.
You would keep the whole staff?
Yes. I think I would. I think that this is a real good coaching staff. My problem was always with CH. I was never convinced that he was head coaching material. But maybe I’ve been wrong about him. We’ll see.
EVenus Tee the moron?
You seem pretty sure of yourself waterboy.. What ? Were you a football stud ?.. Doubt it..all talk. Smh.
CowPolyFan3.0 was the towel boy for the Cow Poly mens soccer team!
Tee is certainly one of the best recruiters in the country. As far as play calling. At the start of the year I didn’t think that he was qualified. But he’s getting better. Look at the receiving statistics. They’re not dominated by one guy as in previous years. They are spreading the ball all over the place. I’d definitely keep Tee Martin.
Jim,
USC has been playing scrubs! Helton can change my mind as well as a vast majority if he kills it in WA! I don’t want to see a close loss either. All that will do is hear and read stories about how much better USC is getting! Until then, this entire staff is just coasting on bad teams.
ND is not very good this year. Washington is great. But Oregon, UCLA and Cal are teams that can beat you on a given day. UCLA is fundamentally a good team. They have an outstanding defense and Rosen is one of the best QB’s in the country. They can throw the ball. Their problem is that they can’t run the ball. But we’ll see how well this coaching staff does in the rest of the year. If they win aqll of the rest of the games, including Washington, would you still be looking for another coach? I just don’t want to get a guy in there for a long term contract who will be a good coach but not good enough to be Washington.
I and a vast majority including the media need to see a dominant win vs. a great team. That’s WA! That W would be a resume builder for Helton! Until then, the coaches are coasting on bad teams and Darnold!
Helton certainly has a lot more to prove but, so far, I like what I see. But things could change fast. Time will tell. We definitely missed on Petersen. It’s going to be hard to find another one like him. Sometimes opportunities arise for a short time and you have to grab on to it or you lose it. PH obviously didn’t do that. But he magnified his mistake by hiring a coach from the same conference thereby opening a position for his missed opportunity to take.
Washington isn’t ” great ” no one in the conference is great. Washington needed OT to beat UA
I don’t think Washington can beat Alabama but I think that they are one of the best teams in the country. Arizona wasn’t as banged up when they played the Huskies.
Pete Carroll made a living on playing scrubs. Up until Chip Kelly became HC the Pac 10 was at or under 500 for most teams. They had maybe 4-6 bowl teams. In 2015 they had ten winning 6. If memory serves me correct, didn’t Carroll take a nos 4 team to Seattle and lose to a bunch of scrubs(Sark I Think). How about going to Corvallis and playing those scrubs? That didn’t work out to well. Or how bout the time nos. 5 USC went to Eugene and got their clock cleaned by no. 10 Oregon. His defense gave up over 600 yards that day. The Pac 10 is much better now then it was in the Pete Carroll era.
Here we go again with the best recruiter crap. How many top OL and DL has he recruited ? Does he just recruit WR’s ? He’s a moron his Wunderlic score of 11 at at the combine proves it, good lord.
I don’t think that he’s a moron at all.
Tee wanted Sam, he pleaded with Helton to start Sam. He deserves some credit for that. And he’s playing to Darnolds strengths. What more do you want from a first time play caller?
I thought Helton pleaded with Sark for Darnold, now it’s Martin ?
What?
The reason why Tee is “better” is because he is watching Norm Chow videos from the glory days! Taking notes! As for Chip Kelly, he belongs in college! Chip will always be a winner! Just like Saban! In college! Bring Chip to USC and he’ll blow up the PAC12 in the same season!
Helton is just a good ole’ PC boy that will make a good assistant anywhere he lands.
He’s a follower.
Norm Chow was the master. Sark and Kiffin learned everything they ever learned about offense from him. Chip may belong in college…I don’t know. But even if he belongs in college, I always got the impression while he was at Oregon, that he didn’t want to be in college. I predicted that he would leave. I don’t think that he liked recruiting and babysitting these kids. I never got the impression that he was much of a people person. He just wants to deal with the X’s and 0’s. You can do that in the pros because it’s more of a business.
Chip is tanking in the pros. He belongs in college.
Im with u. Chip belongs at SC, baby.
Well it is hard to change yourself and I don
t see Helton ever having the personality to make clowns stop clowning around.
I don’t think personality is everything when it comes to a head coach. Tom Landry wasn’t exactly the sunshine boy. And then there is Bill Belichick. But in the case of CH, we’ll see because history will tell. Like I said. If you can get Tom Herman or someone like him then go for it. But there are a lot of coaches out there who are not in the Petersen class. So even if we have good teams we’ll still end up losing to them every year. If this guys turns out well, why not give him a couple of years and see what he can do and if he doesn’t work out, there’s always great coaches popping up every year just as Herman has recently. We can grab one of them. Oregon needs to get rid of that coach but to get rid of him they will have to pay him 17.5 million dollars because they hired him to a long term contract. I just don’t want to hire another guy that’s not going to work out for a long term contract.
Jim, you got it almost right, IMO. if USC does what you mention in your “summary”, I say the H@LL with Herman, Whittingham, Shaw, and the rest. FIGHT ON, COACHING STAFF !!! FIGHT ON, TROJANS !!!
We’ll see what happens. We’re only a little more than half way through the season.
Good post schammer
Petersen is good at building a program. Boise is suceeding after he left because he built a winning formula. The part about Petersen he is humble and in to detail . The fact that he made Browning do 500 pushups at practice for taunting on the first touchdown against Oregon speaks volumes. He says it is a privilege to play College football.
I read that too – 500 pushups – it was in contrast to the lack of such by Mora per personal fouls – Helton is the same (similar to Mora) which is why a new regime needs to take charge at USC regardless of how this and next year work out.
Plus remember Petersen threw Marcus Peters off the team bis first hear as coach at UW and Peters became defensive rookie of year in NFL
Yeah well the NFL isn’t the Pac-12 i.e. ‘Peters’ found his ‘element’ in the NFL which is why he better save his money ‘cuz there ain’t a lot of openings for ex-players w.o. a degree.
Helton the same as Mora? That is laughable. Some of you are so anti Helton you refuse to see the week to week improvement in our team. It’s sad you will be disappointed when this continues and SC wins a bowl game. Who is your magic marker coach you think will win a NC every year? You all say you want a team who plays hard and is prepared. Id say you have seen that the past 4 games.
Brent,
They are playing scrubs! I’m not expecting a natty this year, but I sure wasn’t expecting the unfit disaster I saw vs. Alabama! Helton publicly admitted he was preparing for that game since December 2015! That’s pathetic! Then he publicly admits he wants USC to be like Stanford! No identity at all! Another loss vs. Stanford! You know the rest of the story!
Stanford was how many weeks ago? Again my point is they are improving unless you have already decided you want to put another quarter in the head coach machine to churn out another guy. Tom Herman….why! What has he done? He’s beaten scrubs and lost to scrubs but he’s the messiah?
Herman’s record is 19-2 at Houston and they are currently ranked #11 by both the Coaches and AP poll. There’s not a coach nor a sportswriter in the country who would say Gomer would have been capable of pulling that off at Houston, no matter who they played – and they manhandled Florida State last December and finished 8th in the country.
We all know Gomer will be here at least through 2017 and USC has been improving since Darnold took over at Swann’s direction (fact). Gomer would never have gotten the USC HC job if USC had conducted an honest, aggressive search instead of turning the decision over to Nikias, the USC President, who had his own reasons for choosing Gomer that had little to do with football.
USC’s not bringing in Herman, so don’t worry. He’ll go somewhere else big and programs like ND, LSU or TEXAS would be lucky to get him. But no sense pretending Gomer is viewed as anywhere near the coach Herman is. Herman’s next contract and HCing position will prove that without a doubt. Will he succeed? You never know. But his track record suggests he’d do a lot better than Gomer would.
USC has been improving since Darnold took over at Swann’s direction (fact). Show me a link that says this.
Why would I provide a link when I know about the meeting? I know, you want my sources too but sorry Pete, you’ll have to come up with your own. I’m never giving mine up.
That’s what I thought. You got nothing. There’s and old saying that says if you say something and you can’t demonstrate what you said then you got nothing.
I’ve got one thing you don’t have and that’s access to the USC ath dept.
But go ahead and believe Swann didn’t tell Gomer to start Darnold. No big deal.
Prove it!
Helton is when he doesn’t make examples of the players who commit personal fouls boyo.
Make examples of payers who commit personal fouls? What would that example look like? Drawing and quartering or the rack? You have no idea what the coaches do or don’t do with players. Because a reporters doesn’t write about it in an article you assume nothing happened? Has the team not played far more disciplined and efficient football the past 3 weeks. Oh yeah, the teams Werner as good so this doesn’t count. Don’t CU and ASU both have winning records while that Az team we just pasted took UW to overtime a couple weeks ago. You all are so negative you refuse to see any improvement. If you set the bar at beating Alabama or even UW to keep a coach you are exactly the SC fan that gives the rest of us a bad name. 19-2 at Houston. Last I checked Sumlin is the one who got that program on the map.
Calm down sweetie – you have no idea if Helton did anything either.
USC has great talent because the top players know they’ll have a better than average shot at getting to the NFL. I have no idea how good a coach Helton is no one does. He finally realized the real qb was Darnhold and not Browne – no Darnhold highly unlikely the record is 4 – 3 as of 17th October.
The reason Clay Helton is justifiably suspect is the record against top tier programs – WI, Stanford, AL and UT – all losses from the end of last year through the first 3rd of this one. Cut that loss total by 2 losses and he’d have a lot of less heat on his skill set. Let’s see how the WA game pans out.
Amazing the amount of people on the dump helton bandwagon. Because your expectations are not immediately met it is get rid of him, we need instant gratification. Good thing we didn’t just hire John McKay. Perhaps this blog could show some patience and lets move the discussion on from what we think about Helton. What we think does not matter and the University will do what they want, in time.
Agree 100%! Many on here say they want a “program” yet want to jettison a coach the minute they don’t see what they want. If the coaches were so bad the kids would have packed it in at 1-3. They certainly would have packed it in after giving up 4 turnovers to CU. not saying Helton is the top coach in the country, but he very well could be a top 5-10 within 3 years. He says they need to improve in areas and the next week they improve in those areas. How many WR and TE are catching balls now? How many RB are entering games prepared and performing? The answer to both ?’s is an awful lot. The D line and O line has improved greatly. We aren’t Alabama in depth yet and we don’t kick kids out of the program who aren’t performing like they do.
A victory over a ranked team (aside from CO) would be appreciated say WA?
Hawkins built up the Boise St. program. Petersen maintained the program. (Granted, Hawkins had little success at Colorado)
Dirk Koetter started it, Hawkins came after him then Petersen
Petersen wanted control of the program , something Haden knew he was unwilling to give up. Sark was accommodating to Haden and just have to look at the sideline stunt to bring Haden down to the field to realize who ran the program. Petersen didnt want to be any part of that scenario. If you look at Washington Roster that took Petersen three years to get the attrition and depth right after Sark its a very young team and about a year ahead of schedule. They still have tough games, Utah, Cal on the road as well as WSU in Pullman. we will get a true measure of USC at Seattle in November.
Petersen was never coming to LA…SC or ucla. Yes I know this for a fact. Sure he “talked” to them but unless the offer was 10-15 mil a year he wasn’t coming and nobody makes 10-15 mil per year. Haden didn’t screw it up any more than the guy at ucla did…Peteren does not want to live in SoCal.
He also wanted full control of the fb program and Haden was not having any of that.. Peterson is a $7 mil top salary… Nothing above that will ever happen!
A school like SC never will or should give “full control” to any coach. That was a smoke screen anyway. Of course Petersen “spoke” w SC, he was never ever coming here. If Haden agreed to full control there would have been another mandate…he wasn’t coming.
What I shared is fact, he wanted control. Haden passed, already set on Sark who he “thought” .. “Got SC” and someone he could easily control.. Well he failed!.
There’s a lot more to that decline by Petersen than his not allegedly not wanting to live in LA – Haden never really wanted him to begin with and Haden let the media create a number of scenarios why it didn’t pan out to them move them toward which ever one he (Haden) thought was good that day of the week to explain why Petersen wasn’t coming.
And what happens if Helton beats Petersen?
I have heard from all the great minds on here that Helton doesn’t have it in him to be a great coach. Every week they set a new milestone “lets see what he does with Colorado”, etc. USC has turned the corner, Darnold has picked up the offense and kept the defense off the field. Now the defense is performing very well, so lets see what they do against …, then we can see if Helton is any good. Why can’t people say that perhaps the coaching has had some effect on the team and yes, along with Darnold, caused a winning attitude with what appears to be a stronger work ethic.
The defense stopped a horrible team on Saturday, but they’ve turned the corner, typical rah rah
You will claim vindication for another of your famous misdiagnoses, Dr. Rachel Maddow of Inside USC.
Nice PC statement there Helton, it shows that you have no guts to call out the conference putting money before player safety
And he achieves what for his team by calling out the conference?
Helton will confirm he has peas and will say what others are too afraid to say and look to others to speak up!
Spoken like someone who has no clue. The TV guys referenced the field temp to get exactly the reaction you are giving. THe field turf heats up from sunlight not air temp. That field temp is probably never under 110-120 degrees in Tuscon at any point during the year. If the air temp is 60 and it’s a cloudless day that field will be well over 100 “on the field”. Do you stick a thermometer in the hardwood of a basketball game or the concrete of a tennis match…no you take the air temp. The “field temp” is a complete gimmick.
It does come into play in artificial turf. Sorry but field temp is not a gimmick.
You really are a moron if you believe that
I understand what you’re saying, but the heat isn’t absorbed by the field it’s radiated. That 6 feet of air that players occupy on the field is definitely hotter.
You are the Ultimate Company Man!
I wonder how flat his face his since he’s got it pushed up against so many fannies
Unfortunately rookie head coaches don’t call out the conference. Swann does not want to hear anything controversialy either.
Even if he was around for 10 years he’d say the same thing.
Show’s that he has a pair, which he apparently doesn’t. I guess you don’t remember John McKay, he had a pair and then some. Oh for the non PC days
Sad but he has another year. If there were any position that we could afford to lose someone, it would be at receiver.
Dodgers tie it up!!!!!!!
Helton is a positive guy without a doubt. Hopefully he makes it, but USC has such high expectstions every year it will be difficult. It does seem the coaching staff is starting to make progress including Tee Martin.
You really think Martin is calling plays?
After watching the game, how could you tell Martin was not calling the plays. Obviously you know more than most of us, please explain.
LOL!.. He thinks he does!!!
CowPolyFan3.0 only knows lawn mowing and Cow Poly mens soccer.
Has he claimed that he swam the English Channel in the winter ?
How do you know he was ?
Unfortunate for Mitchell but this opens up a great opportunity for Burnett. I think he’s a better fit than Mitchell given the other pieces in the receiving corps. With juju and dareus on the outside SC needs a quick guy to play in the slot. From what I’ve seen, Burnett is quicker and shiftier than mitchell.
Burnett has played great and I look forward to him getting more action. Pitman will also benefit from Mitchell being out.
And Sydney, and Jones, and Imatorbhebhe, and Whitney, and Green, and the other 6 top flight receivers on the roster – now if Darnold went down, well then thats it
90% of the county has field turf. The question was about the temp on the field not whether field turf is good or bad. That ship has sailed although I do predict more schools will go back to natural grass in the next 10 years. My point is putting a thermometer on field turf is pointless if the sun is out. Field turf in Antarctica would be warm
It’s a good thing USC has 12 receivers left on their roster, because Clay Helton shouldn’t miss a beat. Unless of course, he wasn’t accurate with his talent evaluation of his wide receiver depth.
Darreus Rogers, Deontay Burnett and Jalen Green will need to pick up the slack. Michael Pittman may actually get meaningful playing time.
Brent is a kiss up!
Hey Scotty, I live in Tucson and I was at the game and it was not that
hot. It was actually a pretty nice day — much better than any 90 degree
early September game in SEC country with 70% humidity. You put a
thermometer on artificial turf in the sun in any stadium and its going
to read 40 degrees hotter than ambient. Let it go.