Lincoln Riley falls under the .500 mark for the first time in his coaching career as Maryland rallies late to send USC to its third consecutive loss.
In all his years playing the sport, Miller Moss had never traveled so far for a football game. But the past month had seen USC and its quarterback crisscross the country, its College Football Playoff hopes unraveling over three Big Ten trips across multiple time zones. And here, at the tail end of that travel nightmare, was the farthest trip of all, with USC in its most vulnerable place of the season, reeling after three losses in four weeks, in desperate need of a get-right game against Maryland.
That stretch had done a number on Moss and the Trojans, his strong start to the season descending into sudden inconsistency that the rest of the team seemed to mirror. The defense was suddenly more fallible than usual. The coaching, suddenly questionable.
All of those issues seemed to swirl up in the same nightmarish moment Saturday night, not long after USC looked primed to put away Maryland, a team that was without a single Big Ten win this season.
