Clay Helton seemed very likely to be fired, but will stay at the USC

USC Clay Helton was in an ultra hot chair. The head coach of the Trojans finished with a 5-7 record this year (and 31-17 in four years), and his team lost three in a row and five out of six – the most recent of the UCLA rivals and Our Lady. According to Steven Godfrey and Richard Johnson of SB Nation, the "consensus of the coaching industry" was about to fire the president.

USC AD Lynn Swann, however, expressed a different point of view by announcing the return of Helton for 2019.

Helton, 46, has been in command just before the middle of the 2015 season, when he became interim coach after Steve Sarkisian's dismissal.

He had also spent a game as an acting coach at the end of 2013, following the resignation of his acting predecessor, Ed Orgeron, who had not secured the position of permanent leader.

Helton made get the job long term, despite going 5-4 in the last right. It was surprising because USC could have pretty much everyone. Helton's players loved him, but his resume did not scream at you "USC head coach!"

• Former QB in Auburn and Houston
• GA and positioner at Duke, Houston and Memphis
• Offensive coordinator at Memphis and USC, including three when USC's offensive did not display a special number at all

It was a bold rental, somewhat confusing (but not automatically bad) in the first place. In some ways, the school is still struggling with this problem.

Helton's shots would have made sense. His team underperformed with a list of overlapping players, the worst being to come this year.

USC has the fourth best composition in the country, according to the rankings of recruitment, which generally allow to predict who will be candidate for the national titles. One of dozens of USC teams with a history of talent says you must win everything.

USC's lineup could make the playoffs in 2019, as disproportionate as it may seem for a team as mediocre as the Trojans this year. But you have to train it.

Other (usual) names have been proposed for the Helton post, plus a trainer in activity that the Trojans would have been right to look for.

The former USC player and Jack Del Rio, from southern California, was quoted as he usually does with this concert. Same thing with Jeff Fisher. Both occur every few years.

Penn State's James Franklin was also quoted. Godfrey and Johnson explain why:

We are told that it is not Franklin's camp that fires the fire.

It meets the intangible needs USC estimates in the information technology sector. He has an aggressive personality in the Pac-12. He has gained some experience in recruiting in Washington State and Kansas and has already restored a national brand that has had much greater damage.

It's not that Franklin would not listen if he wanted to (he would), but right now the conversation is more difficult than a real engagement. And for what it's worth, Franklin, a native of Pennsylvania, worked tirelessly to leave Vanderbilt for Happy Valley in 2013.

But many coaches would have been interested. It's USC.

The first year of Helton has started terribly, raising questions about whether USC should quickly unplug the problem. But he bounced back for a moment.

USC started the 2016 season, its first full year, with a record of 1-3. In the first three games, the Trojans kicked out former five-star quarterback Max Browne, whom they feared may be losing to a transfer if they lost. Browne had difficulties, as did the rest of the team, and USC lost two of its top three. He also lost the fourth goal, but in that game rookie Sam Darnold of Redshirt started with Browne and played well.

The rest of this year belongs to history. The first losses of the Trojans prevented them from participating in the playoffs, but they did not lose another part. They beat Franklin's Penn State in the Rose Bowl behind a record Darnold effort in one of the biggest editions of this historic game. They entered in 2017 with the return of Darnold and a hype of championship type.

USC then resumed its poor performance and still has not solved the problem.

Darnold had a difficult 2017 before the start for the NFL. USC did not have a week off in its 12-game schedule and lost a Friday night game at Washington State, end of September. Then, he lost to Notre-Dame in October and his hopes in the eliminated playoffs were over. The Trojans only managed seven points in a boring Cotton Bowl defeat against Ohio State, and their season did not have the same sense of growth as the 2016 season.

They were not supposed to be special in 2018 either. S & P + projected an 8-4 record. The Trojans, however, lost four games in their first eight games and never threatened anything of importance. They started a real QB freshman, and a youngster even at this level, in J.T. five stars. Daniels, who later reclassified the 2019 class. Although this is not supposed to be l & # 39; yearUSC was supposed to be a little better than it turned out.

The Trojans, missing the season of cuts, had a lot of problems:

Out of doors, they lost to a non-elite Stanford, then lost big against Texas. They saw a 14-point lead against Utah disappear in the eighth week. They were eliminated early in the state of Arizona and could not escape. They lost with a big defensive effort against Cal and a bad UCLA team.

The big programs have high ceilings, of course, but they also have very high floors. USC is neither Stanford nor UCLA nor Washington. But since Pete Carroll's departure in 2008, the Trojans have won less than nine regular-season games more times than they have done.

Helton has not given the appearance that the USC is making progress.

After a loss to Arizona's Herm Edwards State in Week 9, Helton said he would not make any significant changes after the season. A day later, he fired his offensive lineman, a longtime friend. The line was one of many units loaded with former high-level recruits, and one of many units that did not play at all. The Trojans had settled at a level that should never be acceptable to recruiting kings from any geographic region.

USC teams from Helton have never been so terrible. But they have rarely been excellent, and even then their first mistakes have limited the expected results as much as possible.