Fatigue was setting in. Faith, ever fragile, was fading. USC’s revamped defense held tough. Its new starting quarterback looked comfortable. But USC’s grasp on its season opener had been slipping away since halftime. One drive, done in by a botched trick play. Another swallowed by a fourth-down swat.

Still, Miller Moss remained undeterred. More than nine months had passed since the quarterback’s memorable Holiday Bowl debut, long enough to wonder if his six-score performance was merely a bowl-season mirage. But at no point since, nor in any moment Sunday in his second start, did Moss waver. Not even as Louisiana State defenders barreled toward him on third down in the fourth quarter, forcing him to fling a prayer into the corner of the end zone.

That prayer would find its answer, along with a few others Sunday, landing in the hands of Ja’Kobi Lane for a touchdown that turned the tide USC. Poise turned to jubilation for Moss, as he pumped his fists, roaring to the highest reaches of Allegiant Stadium, his gutsy performance helping secure No. 23 USC‘s season-opening 27-20 victory over No. 13 LSU.

For Lincoln Riley, it was proof the changes he made have put USC closer to the College Football Playoff.

“We know what we’ve been building,” Riley said. “I know we’re making progress.”

USC still needed more help to secure the win after Moss’ dramatic touchdown pass to Lane. Its defense held on against LSU deep in its territory, forcing a game-tying field goal, and Moss maneuvered the Trojans down the field, completing five of six passes, before Woody Marks burst through a crease for his second touchdown run.

After an offseason of uncertainty and unanswered questions, Sunday made for a resounding response against the Tigers, the first time in his three regular seasons at USC that Riley beat a team ranked higher than his own.

He had new defensive coordinator D’Anton Lynn to thank, in part, for that, as USC’s defense held an opposing offense to 20 or fewer points for the first time since last September. The Trojans still gave up 421 yards, but LSU averaged 6.6 yards per play, a major improvement from much of last season.

USC’s tackling, a sore spot for the better part of a decade, was night-and-day different. The run defense, which was regularly run over last season, held LSU to 117 yards on the ground, much of which came on four plays.

“This new defensive identity is way different,” USC defensive end Braylan Shelby said. “We knew what we had. We knew what we had to do. And we just went out there and did it.”

Moss took full advantage of those stops when he got them, completing 27 of 36 passes for 378 yards and a touchdown. Where LSU was conservative with quarterback Garrett Nussmeier, Moss let it rip early and often, completing 12 passes of 20 yards or more.

But it was his poise late that was especially eye-opening. Twice on USC’s clinching drive, Moss snuck a bullet pass between two defenders. Earlier in the game, he threw into a crowd of LSU defenders to find wideout Kyron Hudson for a leaping, one-handed grab.

“I got a lot of belief in him,” Riley said. “He’s a tough competitor, man. That’s what he’s proven.”

USC wide receiver Zachariah Branch avoids a tackle attempt by LSU linebacker Harold Perkins Jr. after making a catch in the first half.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Nussmeier seemed well on his way to proving himself Sunday, too, as he moved the Tigers methodically down the field early. Getting rid of the ball quickly, he initially neutralized USC’s pass rush with a barrage of short and intermediate passes, extending four drives in the first half to eight plays or longer.

But after a 13-play LSU drive to open the game, USC’s defense came up with a critical stop on fourth down, inside its own 3-yard line. Lynn dialed up a inside linebacker blitz, and Mason Cobb delivered, forcing an errant throw to end the drive.

The moment loomed large, as neither team led by more than a touchdown the rest of the evening.

USC managed to punch it in just once in the first half, after two drives were stopped deep in the red zone. The first, jump-started by an electric return from Zachariah Branch, stalled at the five-yard line and resulted in a field goal. The second, in the final seconds of the first half, wasn’t so fortunate, as new kicker Michael Lantz missed an easy 29-yard field goal.

It was exactly the sort of setback that might have sent USC spiraling in the past. Not Sunday.

“Our identity really showed through,” Moss said.

Even after LSU mounted a third-quarter touchdown drive, USC’s defense regrouped and clamped down, holding LSU to just 16 yards duringits next two drives.

“There’s a vibe and a confidence about that group right now, and we’re just only going to get better,” Riley said. “It was cool to see in that moment, in that arena, us believing it as much as we did.”

And if Sunday is any indication, belief won’t be limited to USC’s locker room for long.

Follow live coverage of Day 7 at the 2024 US Open

NEW YORK — It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

Twenty-six days after Novak Djokovic won Olympic gold in Paris, he finished off his second-least profitable Grand Slam season since 2009 with a stunning third-round defeat to Alexei Popyrin at the U.S. Open. With a few months remaining on the 2024 tennis calendar, he could end the year without a Tour-level title for the first time since 2005, while simultaneously securing what he describes as the “greatest achievement of his career”.

When has it ever been a case of either/or for Djokovic? The 24-time major winner is generally only satisfied when he is winning everything. Settling for anything less has generally been anathema to the man who has dominated tennis, with a blip or two, since the start of 2011.

As it so often goes in this sport, father time is undefeated. At 37 , perhaps the moment that was always coming has finally arrived. Not in a steep decline, nor an end to his relevance at Grand Slam tournaments. Just his becoming a player that can still hit the heights on occasion, but not all the time and not all season long.

Players who have beaten him include Alejandro Tabilo, Tomas Machac, Luca Nardi, and now Popyrin. His defeats at the majors to his two biggest rivals, Jannik Sinner in Australia and Carlos Alcaraz at Wimbledon, were both desperately one-sided. That Djokovic reached that Wimbledon final just six weeks after surgery on the medial meniscus of his right knee is testament to the fact that he can still be a force at Grand Slams. That Alcaraz cut him down so easily in that final is testament to the feeling that his defeats now, after so long, have the capacity to become ugly very quickly.

It happened against Popyrin, in front of 24,000 on Arthur Ashe. Djokovic has been in recovery for months, slowly upping his physical exertion, and in that time, his game has necessarily suffered. His ball-striking and tactical nous are still there, and he has even added a turbo boost when he needs it, most memorably ripping two forehands past Alcaraz in the second-set tiebreak at the Olympics.

His thoughts after his defeat to Popyrin didn’t account for any of that.

“I have played some of the worst tennis I have ever played, honestly, serving by far the worst ever,” Djokovic told reporters in a short post-match press conference as Friday night ticked into Saturday morning.

Ever since he returned from surgery, his service motion has been ungainly, particulary on the follow-through. He has looked unsteady as he lands, often stumbling into the court. But the ball has still gone in the box. Not so across this tournament, where he made 52 percent of his first serves, against a career average in the mid-60s. He hit 32 double faults in 38 service games across three rounds.

He also acknowledged that it had been difficult coming here so soon after the high of the Olympics, and that he wasn’t really in the right state to compete. “I spent a lot of energy winning the gold, and I did arrive to New York just not feeling fresh mentally and physically,” he said.

GO DEEPER

Novak Djokovic knew he would win Olympic gold – he just didn’t know when

“But because it’s the U.S. Open, I gave it a shot and I tried my best.”

All of this is totally understandable — it’s just, this is Djokovic. Aside from the 2016 to 2018 comedown after he completed the career Grand Slam, what’s been so remarkable about him is his ability to always go again, even as he’s ticked monumental achievement after monumental achievement off his list.

That wasn’t the case against Popyrin. He looked lifeless, struggling to rouse himself in the way he normally does, and he was strikingly quiet — barely making a sound as he struck the ball — even in moments of high exertion and stress. The crowd play was half-hearted. The tight games invariably went against him, rather than for him. The familiar first-set rope-a-dope that turns into a dominant four-set win never came.

In the third set and the early part of the fourth, when Popyrin was collapsing into serves, missing and lambasting himself, it looked as if the inevitable was coming. But it wasn’t the inevitable of the last 20 years that arrived. It was the inevitable of the last eight months.

Alexei Popyrin overcame a wobble midway through the match to seize control in the fourth set. (Sarah Stier / Getty Images)

As his Grand Slam season ends, the phenomenal achievement of winning Olympic gold increasingly looks like a shiny distraction, in analytical terms. Nothing can diminish the scale of doing that at 37, not least Djokovic’s reaction as he collapsed to the clay and shook with tears, but it has still been a pretty disappointing year for him. There are mitigating circumstances — not just Djokovic’s knee, but being struck on the head by a metal water bottle in Rome — that have made achieving his usual heights even more challenging.

He will be back for the Australian Open, desperate to wrestle the title he has won 10 times back from Jannik Sinner, but what happened on Friday wasn’t a blip. It was not an earth-shattering result, like when he lost to Sam Querrey at Wimbledon in 2016, which turned the tennis world upside down. Losing to Popyrin, who ran him close at this year’s Australian Open and at Wimbledon too, was in keeping with many of his defeats this year.

Winning in Paris was the outlier, and while a Grand Slam final; semifinal; and quarterfinal is a year that the vast, vast majority of players would retire on at any age, that isn’t how Djokovic thinks. Until 2024, he had won a major title every year since 2010, but for 2017.

“Sitting from a larger perspective, of course I have to be content,” Djokovic said when asked to take a longer-term view himself. Seeing whether Djokovic has the ability to reset his goals in the next year or so, and whether he is happy to do so, will be one of the defining stories in tennis in 2025.

(Top photo: Sarah Stier / Getty Images)

The 2024 U.S. Open will be one Coco Gauff would like to forget sooner rather than later.

The defending champion failed to advance past the Round of 16 on Sunday afternoon, losing to fellow American Emma Navarro, 6-3, 4-6, 6-3.

Navarro took care of business in the first set, and the second was a back-and-forth battle early. With the set tied at three, Navarro broke Gauff’s serve to go up 4-3, putting Gauff on thin ice.

But it wasn’t thin enough as Gauff returned the favor by breaking Navarro’s serve. Gauff then took a 5-4 lead and then broke Navarro again to take the match to a third set.

Gauff won the first game, with all signs pointing to momentum on her side. But it didn’t carry over as Navarro took the next three. The two then alternated games, putting Navarro up 5-3 with Gauff serving, but that wasn’t much of an advantage for the reigning champ, who double-faulted three times to help Navarro advance to the quarterfinals.

Coco Gauff is shown after a miss during her match against Emma Navarro at the U.S. Open. (Robert Deutsch-USA TODAY Sports)

NOVAK DJOKOVIC’S SHOCKING US OPEN LOSS ENDS INCREDIBLE 22-YEAR STREAK

Gauff had 19 double faults in the match, 11 of which came in the final set. After her final one, she threw her racket down in anger.

It’s the second grand slam in a row she lost in the Round of 16 after advancing to at least the semifinal in her previous three. It’s also the sixth year in a row the reigning champ failed to make it to the quarterfinals. No reigning champ has made it to a semifinal since Serena Williams in 2015.

Navarro next faces Paula Badosa of Spain on Tuesday; it’s her second straight quarterfinal in what’s been a career-year for the 23-year-old, who had never made it past the second round of a grand slam until this year.

Emma Navarro, left, is shown after beating Coco Gauff at the 2024 U.S. Open. (Robert Deutsch-USA TODAY Sports)

She’s advanced to at least the Round of 16 in each grand slam this year, with her best finish being the quarterfinal in July’s Wimbledon.

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