Rebuilding the walls of Troy

USC beat LSU in large part by playing effective defense. How did Lincoln Riley's Trojans build a decent defense from the wreckage of 2023?

Here’s a rather unfortunate truth about me and my academic career. I’ve read parts of Virgil’s “Aeneid” twice. I had to, but it was lucky that I did. Back in the spring semester of 2008 I needed only two classes to graduate from the University of Texas. One was my History seminar course, and I took one on Thomas Jefferson. It was kinda boring and spent a lot of time doodling 12 personnel formations in my note pad rather than listening to classmates’ presentations. The other was the completion of my fourth semester of a foreign language.

The foreign language I had landed on was Latin, and after drudging my way through the first three semesters without really mastering the language’s vocabulary or rules, it all caught up to me in the fourth semester when the class was built around reading the Aeneid. I failed and had to retake it over the summer in order to finally graduate. It was a relief when the first half of the summer course focused on Book II of the Aeneid, which I now knew decently well enough to basically BS my way through the course and get the coveted UT-Austin degree.

Book II of the Aeneid concerns the fall of Troy and the overall epic chronicles the adventures of Aeneas and those Trojans who survived the sack of the city through a secret passage to ultimately found a new city in Italy which would become Rome. Ironically the fall of Troy doesn’t come up in Homer’s “Iliad” about the Trojan war. That epic poem takes place entirely between the beginning and ending of the war. This epic poem captures the end of that saga as its introduction to a new one.

I don’t think the USC athletics departments folks have read Book II of the Aeneid even once, since they did a promotional for the season in which they depict the Trojan soldiers as being the guys inside the Trojan horse when, in fact, they were the guys who’s wall was compromised by allowing the horse through the gate.

However, Lincoln Riley at least put some thought into how to avoid opponents circumventing his defensive walls last offseason which paid off in a big way against LSU.

The Tigers had 421 yards of offense and just one turnover but produced only 20 points and were 5-13 on 3rd down. When the Trojans needed stops, they got them.

Here are the key features to their overhaul which allowed them to rebuild Troy’s walls.