Clay Helton may have gotten his feet wet with an eight-game headstart on 2016, but his first full season features six teams ranked in the preseason AP Top 25, putting a damper on the weight of any previous experience.
As always, USC boasts an extremely talented team that should provide a physical advantage on a somewhat weekly basis. But 2016 is a different beast than usual.
According to Bill Connelly’s metrics at SB Nation, the Trojans have a sub-50 percent win probability in four games. That includes games away from the LA Coliseum against Alabama and Washington, 2015’s top two defenses in DFEI, which measures opponent-adjusted drive efficiency.