BC and USC beat USC.

What the hell was that?  

The last time USC looked this unprepared and mentally out of the game was the 2012 Sun Bowl.  USC Trojans laid so many rotten eggs at Boston College, it'll take at least two weeks to air out the stink (thank goodness for the bye week).

Missing persons report: USC defense.

If this is the way Justin Wilcox's defense is going to perform against the hurry-up spread offense, this team is not going to go bowling.  On several occasions two tacklers would target one player in the option game, which of course left the other option player completely free.  On other occasions the defensive end would lose contain on the backside, leaving a reverse or a cut back wide open.  Playing against Arizona and UCLA, the Trojans would be blown out.

It's not entirely the defense's fault, though.

Everywhere around the team, they were piling up mental error after mental error.  False starts, holding, linemen down field before a pass, wide open passes dropped and overthrown.  Cody Kessler looked like he regressed back to 2013, holding onto the ball like he was the Statue of Liberty, leading to a sack -- gone was the silent 3 second count.  There were missed blocks by wide receivers, missed blocks by the tailback, and missed blocking assignments by the linesmen.  We actually saw a kick returner nearly forget to grab the football -- a live ball -- rolling around in the end zone, and down it.  WTF?

And let's stop running backwards.  I didn't think this required stating, but when you've got the first down, you don't run backwards and lose the first down; you fall forward.  Repeat after me: F-O-R-W-A-R-D not backward.

And I don't get why a coach would call a run play, down by two touchdowns in the fourth quarter.  So what if you catch the defense off guard -- they're keeping the plays in front of them so that they can slow down the game.  A total of 20 yards on the ground, dude, and you want to go to the run game late in the fourth quarter down by two scores?  Really?

It's not the end of the world.  Yet.

It's not the end of the world or the season, and thank goodness this wasn't a conference game.  Even Pete Carroll's teams would lay a rotten one every once in a while, so maybe this is one of those rotten eggs?

But geez, you've got to wonder if they're regressing.  The team's best showing was against Fresno State; the worst was against BC.  Maybe BC is a top-10 team?  I doubt it.  And if they're not, then we should be worried about where USC is headed.  How USC performs against Oregon State in two weeks will tell us a lot, especially coming off a bye week.