Welcome to the Times of Troy, our weekly newsletter featuring all things Trojans athletics. Ryan Kartje, who covers USC football and men’s basketball for The Times, will be your host. To sign up to get this newsletter delivered every Monday to your inbox, click here .

Welcome back to the Times of Troy newsletter. Here’s hoping you had a nice, relaxing bye week that was not consumed by a sick toddler. Alas, not all of us were so lucky.

I can’t imagine there was much relaxing for Lincoln Riley this week, either. Once again, USC is at risk of falling out of the College Football Playoff picture by the first week of November. And once again, fans have turned their ire to Riley and his play calling.

I’d say poor execution on defense was probably more to blame at Notre Dame. But objectivel

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