The USC offense is myopic, predictable, and easy to contain:
Tee Martin and the USC offense has yet to establish more than 3 consistently viable offensive threats in a game outside of the Stanford contest. Usually it is only two threats the defense has to worry about. That makes it very easy for defenses to blanket Burnett, provide bare minimum coverage to any other receivers and use the remaining 7 or 8 defenders to crash the box. For those of you wondering what happened to the running game or why the line started to struggle seemingly out of nowhere, this is why. The Trojans have 5 offensive linemen and on literally almost every play the defense is bringing intense, physical pressure from seven to nine players in the box. There is no way the offensive line, even when fully healthy, can consistently open up running lanes or keep Darnold upright when he stays in the pocket. Unless USC can establish a robust passing attack, this will keep happening.
It is a pretty simple defensive formula that everyone is going to pattern in some way as long as it keeps working and that should be an advantage for the Trojans. Imagine knowing almost exactly what the defense is going to do, or at least the broad strokes, before you even begin to watch film and create your offensive game plan. That would seem like a massive gift to an offensive coordinator and yet for the last three games Tee Martin, armed with this knowledge, continues to serve up an offense destined to fail. The offense continues to do the same things over and over, never break tendencies, and fail to put the players in a position to succeed.
Here is the bulk of the USC playbook at this point: most of the time run out of a 3 receiver set with the TE close on the line and one running back with the QB either in shotgun or pistol formation.
Run between the tackles usually to the same spot and into a loaded box
Quick pass underneath 6 yards or closer to the line of scrimmage to 2 players
Deep pass thrown inaccurately and into traffic
Begrudgingly throw to someone else only on occasion and abandon it afterwards
Seriously, this is pretty much it. Occasionally they will mix up the formation in a failed attempt to disguise the plays but this is pretty much the entire offense at this point. No disrespect to any defensive coordinators out there but you do not need to be a defensive mastermind to figure this offense out. In addition to this hopeless simplicity there are five major detriments that plague Martins offense and none of them have to do with a failure to execute:
Painfully predictable tendencies
Poor formations that make things easier on the defense
Failing to use players strengths and sometimes failing to use players at all
Poor play design and a failure to properly set up plays
Near total inability to disguise plays or trick the defense
