USC head coach Lincoln Riley gets slammed after loss to Notre Dame: "He's been a fraud since Oklahoma"

Lincoln Riley and the USC Trojans have been flirting with a blowout for a few weeks now, and the Notre Dame Fighting Irish firmly pulled the rug from under them in a week seven pummelling in South Bend.

USC has relied on quarterback Caleb William's brilliance to bail them out of tough spots, and Arizona and Colorado came close to bursting the Trojans' bubble in the past two weeks.

Head coach Riley is being asked why the Trojans don't look like a championship-winning team after assembling a talented roster that contains the reigning Heisman Trophy winner.

After the 48-20 blowout loss to Notre Dame, CFB fans took to X to mock Riley, whose team does not have room for mistakes if they want to make the college football playoffs.

USC's defense is the bane of Lincoln Riley

Fans have repeatedly said that Riley opted to depart the Oklahoma Sooners' job with Alex Grinch, the defensive coordinator who oversaw his time as head coach of OU.

The USC defense hasn't improved, with Grinch in charge, and the Trojans have looked vulnerable defensively throughout Riley's tenure.

The Trojans lost to the Utah Utes in the Pac-12 championship game and to the Tulane Greenwave in the Cotton Bowl. They opted against changing anything except adding former Arizona Cardinals coach Kliff Kingsbury as a senior analyst.

The USC defense is No. 96 among the 131 FBS teams for scoring defense, allowing 30 points per game this season, and in giving up 400 yards a game to opponents, it is the No. 93 ranked defense in the country.

After the Caleb Williams-inspired 43-41 comeback win against Arizona in triple overtime, Riley defended his defensive unit, not knowing that disaster lurked on the horizon.

"(If) we (made) that field goal (at the end of regulation), we would be talking about how the defense only gave up 11 points the rest of the day, and they started the run that got us back on the same page. But it's one field goal that we don't make that the defense has no control over," Riley said, "All everyone wants to do is look at the final score, and it just doesn't tell the entire story. ... this is a much improved (defensive) unit. There's no question about it."

Riley is on thin ice at USC in terms of their national championship aspirations. One wrong move from now until the end of the season and another season without a college football playoffs appearance beckons.