Month: September 2025

USC vs. Michigan State: Errors by All

Posted on by commbro

USC vs. Michigan State
September 20, 2025 at 8:11pm
Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, Los Angeles, CA: (67,614 of 77,500)
Total Time: not sure

You may be curious as to why the total game time lists not sure.

If you were to believe the official stats, then the game ended at 7:39am and the total run time at 11 hours and 28 minutes. Although it felt that way from all the penalties, I’m pretty sure we got out of there right as it hit midnight and we all turned into pumpkin spice lattes. Those refs really like to extend these late night games. Are they taking revenge on the whole stadium because they had to work the late shift? At a certain point, we needed a penalties per drive stat, which we will coin as PPD. According to Google’s AI, it’s an existing acronym for postpartum depression or paranoid personality disorder, both of which can be glibly twisted to fit the situation.

And just to point out another strange thing, one of the referees is named Marcus Allen…but wasn’t the USC Heisman winner.

You’re looking for the wrong Heisman winner on the sideline

Another mistake I found was that USC is written as having 22 fair catches from kickoffs this game. The total number of kickoffs between the two teams was 13. Someone was definitely tired out of their mind while typing this thing up. Do the referees have penalty flags for the stats people? Errors seem to be coming from everyone. Now, to the real content…

The game was another one that felt a bit uncomfortable as the Michigan State took the lead early in the first quarter and kept it close at times. It makes one eager to criticize, but it’s quite the luxury of being able to complain about only having a 7 or 14 point lead in the fourth quarter. Those are Alabama dynasty kind of problems. Even in the Pete Carroll glory days, sometimes they’d be losing at the half. 

One particularly bad area was in the third quarter. The Trojans had them at a three-and-out. Somehow they turned that 4th-and-7 into a first down with penalties. First was the running into the kicker, then an illegal substitution penalty of all things. The renewed drive led to a touchdown. The immediate follow-up was not a score, but a fumble (not to be confused with the butt fumble) at their own 32, leading to another touchdown drive (which featured its own SC penalties). These are the kinds of mistakes that will cost you against a better opponent. Yet, at no point in the game, did it feel like the Spartans had control over the game. Being able to win soundly with a negative turnover against the best competition so far is not a bad place to be. 

Now on to Good/Badisms, because this post looks like it’s about to finish up later than this game did.

Good/Badisms

Good: The Trojans amassed 289 yards of rushing yards—more than their passing yards. It also helped their totals to not take a single sack

Good: Jayden Maiava’s top tier fakes and decision-making on read option plays

Good: 66.7% on third down conversions (8 of 12)

Bad: Failing a fourth down conversion, so now they’re not perfect anymore!

Bad x 3: The same few issues keep happening. The defensive backs let big plays through, the front seven let some runners slip past after contact, and penalties. I guess that’s part of this season’s identity at this point. The big question is if they can keep it together enough against the next three teams that will presumably be ranked (or perhaps even four if Nebraska gets through a very winnable set of games)

Good: USC was able to burn through half the fourth quarter on a touchdown drive to put the pressure back on the Spartans when they came within one score

CommBro Breaker

While USC is still #1 in average yards per play, they have dropped to a paltry 9.19 ypp. Not even getting a first down every play on average. It’s almost as low as the #2 in ypp (8.90 ypp), Florida State, and they just lost to an unranked team tonight. Who wants to be that?? We basically lost already.

Depressing Stat of the Week: The Trojans dropped even further in penalty yards per game (#125 to #129) in the nation for penalty yards a game (80.3 to 80.8)

Depressing Stat of the Week #2: USC is #110 in passes defended per game (but somehow #3 in the nation for interceptions)

Depressing Stat of the Week #3: USC is #98 in fumbles lost and also have lost 100% of their fumbles, making them dead last in that category. Should they start doing recovery drills? Kidding—I don’t think it’s that dire.

Depressing Stat of the Week #4: I’m only doing so many depressing stats because they’re still undefeated. Anyway, USC is #134 in punts per game. Who needs to be fired for this? They’re only punting once per game. How much are they paying Sam Johnson in NIL money to sit on the bench? PUT HIM IN. FREE SAM JOHNSON

Weird Stat of the Week: All three rushing touchdowns in this game weren’t from running backs. They got their revenge though, with two of them being tied for #2 in receptions this game

Uplifting Stat of the Week #1: USC is #3 in the nation in yards per run (7.06) and tied for #3 in rushing touchdowns (15)

Uplifting Stat of the Week #2: The Trojans have retained their spot of most sacks in the nation (16).

 

USC vs. Purdue: PP Rain

Posted on by commbro

Purdue vs. USC
September 13, 2025 at 3:45pm (Lightning Delay)
Ross-Ade Stadium, West Lafayette, IN: (58,065 of 61,441)
Total Time: 3 hours 16 minutes

The first road game of the season ended in victory, but probably sloppier than most hopefuls would like. However, as the resident pessimist, I’m here to temper that with some optimism. By the end of the season, we may see that this isn’t the same Purdue team that went 1-11 and had the 5th worst scoring offense and 4th worst scoring defense of the 2024 season. Three games into head coach Barry Odom’s tenure at Purdue, he has them with more wins than last year already!

Joking aside, Odom actually has a decent resume. He took over a UNLV team that hadn’t had a winning season since Lane Kiffin was still at USC (three interims, and two head coaches ago!) and immediately took them to the conference championship and a 9-win season. He followed it up with their first ever 11-win season before leaving for Purdue. He’s also responsible for 25% of their bowl appearances and bowl wins…so he could have very well had an instant impact with the Boilermakers. Aaaaand I could be eating my words as soon as next week when an angry 0-2 Notre Dame team boils them alive.

By the way, were you wondering what a Boilermaker is?

Purdue Pete, better known by his nickname: PP

Anyway, now that you’re done looking into those soulless eyes, we can do a quick foray into homerism. The broadcasters definitely felt more than a bit biased. Gary Danielson I get, being the former Purdue quarterback, but Brad Nessler? What’s his angle on this? Then there were those random penalties like the jumping penalty on the punt that led to Purdue’s first three points. Then a random defensive holding call on a lineman during a run play that was trying to make a tackle?

Even the biased commentators didn’t like this call

You can try to argue there was a penalty there, but it sure seems like nothing. Even if there was, they are enforcing it with the stringency of the Purdue Owl attacking you with MLA.

The deadly Purduo staring into your soul. Wait…there’s another owl associated with a duo…Duolingo. Conspiracy uncovered

By the way, Purdue had more first downs by penalty (5) than by rushing (3). There’s always stuff to criticize though, and there might be no-calls that USC got away with, so let’s just move on. I’ll admit that I’m such a homer, that I could’ve wrote the Odyssey.

Good/Badisms

Good/Bad: Jayden Maiava showed greatly improved deep ball accuracy, hitting receivers in stride downfield. However, he also still had some risky passes thrown up under pressure that easily could have been interceptions if bounced a bit differently…luckily, most of it was concentrated into one bad drive.

Good/Bad: A fluky play like the double pass trick play that went from a dropped interception, to fumble, and miraculously to touchdown. It’s bad because it happened, but also it means it won’t be happening often. They only allowed one other touchdown.

Bad: They need to clean up the tackling a bit still. USC was in Purdue’s backfield a lot, which showed how well they sniffed out plays. However, they didn’t bring them down in many cases, leading to large gains

Good: Okay, but five sacks and ten tackles for loss…so clearly it worked sometimes.

Goodish: Another zero punt game, but need more drives to translate to points

Good: Three interceptions, two by Bishop Fitzgerald and, of course, the fan favorite by Jamaal Jarrett. That one by number zero was especially meaningful since mid-third quarter, USC only made a field goal, Purdue was in the red zone and could have brought the game within one score (23-10), but the 70-yard pick six by Jamaal Jarrett bailed them out, bringing it back to a 3-score game. That moment was quite the swing.

Bad: Scoring zero offensive touchdowns in the second half

Good: 10:55 time of possession in the third quarter to really put a team away. Shows the team has the ability to do it and Lincoln Riley has grown as a coach.

Bad/Good: Poor 3rd down conversions, but made up with perfect on 4th down conversions.

Good: Red zone defense: two scores out of five attempts allowed and only one TD

Good: Ryon Sayeri made all but one of his field goals in rainy conditions, including a long 48-yarder

Good: Eli Sanders and Waymond Jordan both decent running. King Miller getting meaningful carries outside of garbage time and making them worth it. The running backs have USC at #8 in the nation for runs of 10+ yards (23).

CommBro Breaker

So all in all, it was a messy game with some missed opportunities on offense and defense, but it was a weird game and there’s still a lot of stuff that can’t be extrapolated from it due to that.

Along with the lightning delay and rain, the Purdue coaching staff carried both the former USC offensive line coach and Maiava’s former coach at UNLC. Also, as the broadcast mentioned, the last time USC won in the Eastern timezone was also when Kiffin was still here: 2012 against Syracuse. It was also the last time a USC game featured a weather delay. And lastly, let’s be honest, if this was last year’s team, they would’ve found a way to lose this game too. So let’s appreciate it for what it is.

Weird Stat of the Week: USC and Purdue both sit at #41 in scoring defense with 16.7 points per game allowed

Uplifting Stat of the Week #1: USC is tied for #2 in the nation in interceptions (6) and tied for #1 in pick sixes (2)

Uplifting Stat of the Week #2: The Trojans have the most sacks in the nation (14) and are two-thirds of the way to last season’s total (21) with 9+ games to go.

Depressing Stat of the Week: The Trojans sit at #125 in the nation for penalty yards a game (80.3)