No longer on shaky ground, Clay Helton, USC embrace high expectations
LOS ANGELES — Poise, the art of remaining calm and balanced under pressure, was one of Clay Helton’s talking points as a quarterbacks coach. So it only made sense that he’d preach the same mantra when promoted to head coach at Southern California, particularly after the Trojans dropped three of their first four games to begin last season.
After the third loss, a heartbreaker at Utah, Helton told the Trojans to stay the course. We’re heading in the right direction, he said, and if we keep competing and believing, you’ll look up in November and we’ll have won a lot of football games.
Lo and behold — the Trojans haven’t lost since.
“It was one of the most rewarding experiences of my coaching career,” Helton told USA TODAY Sports. “Do you have a true belief in your plan and your process? It was put to the ultimate test. Do you believe in the men that surround you? The answer was yes: I believed in our plan, and I believed in the men that surrounded me.”
He returned to that message after a 26-13 win against then-No. 4 Washington on Nov. 12, telling the Trojans to reflect back on the lessons they’d learned as a team. They’d marked every box on the checklist, in Helton’s mind:
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The Trojans didn’t beat themselves, as they had earlier in the season. They didn’t get lost in the hype, as in a season-opening rout at the hands of top-ranked Alabama. They played clean, without turnovers, and “played our identity,” Helton said.
During the ensuing two weeks, USC knocked off rivals UCLA and Notre Dame in rivalry games, punching its ticket to the Rose Bowl. In doing so, the Trojans pulled off a rare trifecta. Last year’s team — this coming fall marks the 125th anniversary of USC’s football debut — was the 13th in program history to beat the Bruins and the Fighting Irish and win the Rose Bowl in the same season.
“Every time is not going to be perfect. It’s really easy when things are going well,” Helton said. “But when things are going a little bad, does your team and do your players have trust in one another? Do we have that relationship that’s close enough to, even in bad times, you’re going to listen, you’re going to learn and you’re going to get better from it?”
It’s easy to pinpoint specific factors for the in-season turnaround. Take quarterback Sam Darnold, for instance; the Trojans lost his debut start, against the Utes, and then hit another gear. Or the vastly improved play of the USC defense, particularly in stopping the run. Another asset, an improving level of depth following NCAA sanctions, will make itself felt on an even more noticeable scale in the near future.
Yet there was another, less definable, factor at play. Though last fall marked Helton’s first full season as USC’s head coach, he’d been promoted to the interim position the previous October following Steve Sarkisian’s dismissal. Having a built-in level of trust with the roster “kind of gave me a head start,” Helton said.
“If I would’ve been a completely new coach, I think it would’ve been a lot harder,” he admitted. “When you’re 1-3, the noise out there is great. But you have to try to block that out because you’re dealing with 18- to 21-year-olds. And how you react is how they’re going to react.”
Rather than shrug off Helton’s calls for continuity — the idea back in September that wins were just around the corner — the Trojans embraced them. To USC, this wasn’t a new tactic: Helton had urged the same mindset as interim coach, and on a smaller scale with the Trojans’ quarterbacks as their position coach.
“I think there’s something to be said for being a real dude from start to finish,” said Darnold, a strong Heisman Trophy contender entering his sophomore season.
As USC enters the heart of this offseason, the question now becomes whether a similar mentality can propel a team with vastly different expectations. Few projected the Trojans for a top-five finish heading into last season; fewer still thought they’d rebound after such a rocky start. Not so for this coming fall: USC likely will be pegged inside the top five in the Amway Coaches Poll heading into September.
The last time this program faced such lofty expectations was in 2012, when the Lane Kiffin-coached Trojans began the season ranked No. 1 in the Associated Press poll but lost six games, becoming the first team since Mississippi in 1964 to start the season No. 1 and end it unranked. It’s too early to say with any certainty that USC will avoid the same fate in 2017, even if a failure on that scale seems highly unlikely.
The team won’t change its approach. The most memorable takeaway from last season wasn’t the epic 52-49 Rose Bowl win against Penn State — though that game will “live a long, long time,” Helton said — but in how it solidified the Trojans’ blueprint. Rather than leading the coaching staff to scrap its plans and improvise, the sluggish start strongly reinforced Helton’s vision for the program.
Before speaking to the team after the Utah loss, he asked himself two questions: Did we get better from the Alabama loss to Stanford loss? Did we get better between Stanford and Utah? In each case, the answer was yes.
So don’t look for USC to change in 2017, even as the hype reaches a feverish, Pete Carroll-era pitch. Once on shaky ground, Helton’s young tenure as head coach has been validated. For now, at least. Up next: USC takes aim at the next step, carrying its nine-game winning streak into September with plans of reaching the College Football Playoff.
“To be a part of that history, to be part of that tradition, is why you come to USC,” Helton said.
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