USC's Lincoln Riley Changes the Focus of the Bye Week

No.18 USC Football is in the middle of their second bye week of the 2026 season.

Head coach Lincoln Riley promises that this bye week will be handled much differently than the last bye week.

Prior to their first bye week, USC had defeated the Penn State Nittany Lions in their annual “White Out” game 31-23.

This was the road trip that every Trojan had circled on their calendar, as the road game that Riley shows the USC fan base how his team has evolved as a road team.

Riley’s team put on a show in front of 115,000 fans at Beaver stadium, the largest crowd ever for a Penn State home game. Maiava played the best game of his career and the Gary Patterson led defense made key stops helping to secure the victory.

USC went into a bye week following their masterful performance against Penn State. Their next opponent were the Wisconsin Badgers, who were coming off of a tail-kicking against the UCLA Bruins at the Rose Bowl.

Riley has said he was using the bye week to get healthy. Mark Bowman, Jide Abasiri and Elijah Paige were key players who missed the Penn State game. Riley wanted to keep his team fresh during the bye week and gave the players the weekend off. 

With USC coming off of a big win and Wisconsin coming off of a loss, USC went into the game as the betting favorite. USC would go on to play the worst game of Lincoln RIley's career.

USC was averaging 32.8 points per game going into the Wisconsin game. Riley’s offense scored seven points in the game, the lowest point total for Riley as a play caller, ever.

Not only did the offense rush for -17 yards, but Maiava was sacked five times.

The 24-7 loss was confusing considering that Riley’s team had two weeks to prepare.

Riley’s soft approach in the bye week showed up on game day in Madison.

USC was bullied in the run game with Wisconsin running up the middle throughout the second half.

When asked on Monday about what the plan was for this upcoming bye week, Riley stated “We do absolutely nothing that we did the previous one”.

Riley said the bye week schedule and the intent of practice was going to be different.

Instead of a bye week that promotes rest and recovery,Riley wants to keep the players sharp by focusing on physical practices and keeping the players ready, even when there is no game.

USC is going to the playoffs if they can survive a schedule that has the No. 6 Indiana Hoosiers, the Maryland Terrapins, and the No. 5 UCLA Bruins remaining. We will see if the new bye-week practice schedule makes a difference on Nov. 14 when USC travels to Bloomington.