In Reply to: ATQ SUC spring preview posted by Pyperkub on June 05, 2026 at 10:49:35
When Grinch was fired and replaced with D’Anton Lynn for the 2024 season, the observation Alicia and I made at the time was that Grinch had so actively suppressed USC’s defensive performance below its baseline talent -- analytically, a far more rare event than fans tend to think, most ineffective coordinators just fail to add anything -- that Lynn would be inevitably celebrated just for not being Grinch.
Revisiting the question after the glow had worn off, it seemed clear that while Lynn was competent enough in getting everybody to pull in the same direction and putting the bodies in the right spots, there wasn’t much more than baseline performance and plenty to criticize schematically and in personnel management. Indeed the most salient was exactly what we’d observed about his 2023 UCLA defense’s dependence on a lucky confluence of unexpected NFL edge rushers and what would happen if those didn’t materialize for USC.
I think Patterson has the ability to actually be a value-added coordinator, something that I had serious doubts about for Lynn, though how quickly that’ll come to be and if there’s some catching up to do with the modern landscape from his time off remains to be seen.