Lynn Swann got it exactly right. And how often have we gotten to say that.

“We acknowledge and understand our deficiencies in areas that include culture, discipline, schemes, personnel and staff," Swann famously said in retaining Clay Helton last November. Significant changes in USC’s football culture were a must. No question about that. And no question that not enough of them have been made but that gets us to where we are today.

Because there have been some, and Swann's decision was the decision. Clay had to be given enough time to show that the changes made, even if not completely addressing the obvious issues, were enough, given the advantages of history, tradition, geography and everything else that’s built into football at the University of Southern California.

And now the verdict is pretty much in. This cannot be a week-to-week deal depending on how things went the last Saturday. This has to be about having faith that the person in charge of the economic engine that drives much of USC's $120 million athletic program, can inspire more than a week's worth of trust.

Short of the kind of miraculous turnaround that Lane Kiffin’s 2011 team experienced, that’s not happening. Not this year.

Sure, Aaron Ausmus & Co. were a step in the right direction. But Aaron’s not doing the week-to-week practice and game plans or driving the rectuiting. Nor did he make the calls in overtime at BYU Saturday.

No, ultimately this comes down to Clay & Co. with his two holdover lieutenants with serious question marks that have failed to be removed – not the assistants, not yet – but the question marks. Although for some, that’s the same thing.

Because when it came down to it in Provo, the timidity, uncertainty and sloppiness that characterized the overtime on offense were merely a microcosm of the first 60 minutes. With a chance to win the game with a touchdown, an almost sure tie for an extension with a field goal the way Chase McGrath is kicking, USC got neither.

The two uninspired play-calls for a runner who was averaging 4.7 yards a carry in his first 21 tries, produced four yards. Did anyone expect much more? Then comes the pass into – what – triple, quadruple – coverage for the game-losing interception. Who can justify any part of that?

If you’re going to throw the ball, you throw it on the first two plays and even though Amon-Ra St. Brown had been relocated to the witness protection program, you still had Michael Pittman and Tyler Vaughns with a combined 16 catches for 160 yards and Michael’s two touchdowns. Not the worst choice.

But that was not the choice USC made. They didn't aggressively go for the win with what USC does best, what it says it believes in. Nope, USC went timidly off into the good night, which unfortunately is exactly where this ended up for USC.

But then facing third down, they chose to throw the game away, and on a pass that wouldn’t come close, if caught, to earning them a first down. As hard as it is to get everything wrong, even if you were blindfolded throwing darts at possible play-calls, USC defied the odds by doing just that.

No field goal opportunity for you, Chase McGrath. We’re putting the game in the hands of two true freshmen in their first-ever road game. And for what? A shorter field goal with a high-risk play? Who does that?

But obviously the BYU loss was about so much more than overtime play-calling choices. It was about a USC team that knew it had to come out of the gate ready to play this season and for the second time in three games in 2019, it ran into a lesser talented team (add Fresno State to the mix here) that pushed USC around and competed far better than the Trojans did.

I’m a big on body language and the contrast between BYU’s less athletic guys who wanted to be there, couldn’t wait to get out on the field to run a game plan they all believed in against a team they knew was more talented to see what they could do was fun to watch. They had the bounce, the fire, the togetherness you didn’t see from a USC team that often looked like it was often moping around trying to avoid the next bad thing that was going to happen to it.

And this after an opening scoring drive that made clear how much more talented these Trojans were. Was this another “name-that-score” start like Fresno State? Unfortunately, that was the case. It only looked like it was going to be a “name-that-score” game.

Despite BYU having to do the only thing on defense it could do – drop eight mostly – USC seemed confused by this strategy. And unable to be as physical as the requisite run game response called for. As for the team whose O-line coach had been bragging just four days earlier about how athletic his pupils were, turns out they weren’t.

“This is SC," Tim Drevno said, this week, "we get special players at SC." Although not all that many "special" qualities were obvious against BYU’s three-man front that not only limited USC to a 3.8-yard average the 45 times the Trojans ran the ball but doubled its sack total for the previous two games. And did so despite dropping eight and rushing only three. The Cougs competed. USC not so much. And that’s the problem.

Clay Helton and Urban Meyer together in this Cotton Bowl photo. Now they're in many USC fan's conversations.

Two out of three games this season USC has been out-competed. You lose your starting quarterback in Game 1, you’d better be ready to compete. But not just in the games. You have four times more practice time than you do in games. That’s where the magic has to happen.

And if it doesn’t happen there, it’s not going to magically appear on Game Day, unless you get lucky and a stubborn Stanford with nowhere near the personnel to play the way it’s trying to play makes you look good. And so you take it. But that looks like it was mostly on Stanford.

Get to Game 3 and an opponent that recognized its shortcomings and decided to make USC adjust as they had freshman quarterback Kedon Slovis looking like he did in the two Coliseum scrimmages running something that suspiciously looked more like the 2018 “gumbo” than the 2019 Air Raid.

Which is where this gets us three games into the season as we think that when you keep the head coach, the defensive coordinator and the special teams coordinator from a program that, as Lynn Swann said, had all those deficiencies, well you haven’t changed enough.

The defense still can’t tackle, and no, elusive quarterbacks do count against you especially when one of them scrambles right through your entire stuck-in-place defense stuck from 16 yards out in the game’s crucial go-ahead score.

And it can’t defend the edge. Is that a surprise to anyone who has watched a second of this season? Didn’t think so. Has there been any improvement? Don’t think so.

And then there are the special teams. How do you turn a spring and summer Aussie pro boomer into just another less-than-40-yard guys once fall and the games get here?

Or even worse, how do you have three major mishaps on just the kickoff return team in three games? Who does that? Unless it’s a careless block, kickoff return teams just don’t get penalized. Unless they’re USC, that is.

Illegal wedge blocking formation? Two No. 7’s. Unsportsmanlike conduct? Illegal procedure? And then a skirmish with the kicker that, of course, saw USC the team that got hit with the flag. How about that for giving up field position in a game USC badly needed it?

So as it turns out, all those new staffers and the change in direction for the weight and nutrition programs in the offseason don’t seem to mean that much if there’s no real change – or not enough that matters – when it comes to the actual season.

If Fall Camp goes into the historical hamper as that time when the Trojans tackle and compete and are physical because – well, that’s the kind of game football is – and then USC goes to a different place when the season gets here, then those changes become footnotes -- not an actual change in the culture.

And if “this team is built for this,” as Clay said it is, built to keep coming back from adversity, it’s hard to argue with his assessment. He should know. He built the team -- and the adversity -- it must keep coming back from.

We’d have loved to catch up with Graham Harrell for his input but the lone single new guy in charge wasn’t available for questions about how his 2019 Air Raid seems to have morphed into the 2018 “gumbo”.

And now here comes Utah Friday. And what should have been a big, exciting game between unbeaten teams for the Pac-12 South at the Coliseum is anything but after USC’s loss to a BYU team Utah easily handled in Week 1. And USC fans are forced to the hope that the Coliseum jinx for winless Utah here continues.

Not that USC will continue it. But that something happens to Utah to extend it. As happened Saturday. That game was completely driven by BYU. We’re going to drop eight, BYU said, so run the ball with your pretty puny run game – oh and please don’t put Markese Stepp in – and why don’t you take Amon-Ra out? Or at least stop throwing to him.

Good questions for Graham – when and if we get to talk to him. And maybe he can clear up who was calling the plays and how that responsibility breaks down. It’s a familiar discussion around here after a couple of years of Tee Martin sharing responsibilities – with who and how much we were never certain.

But there you have it. Has USC reached another in-season inflection point for the third time in eight years? People are already handicapping how this would go if it happens after the Utah game with an extra day to adjust until back-to-back road trips to Washington and Notre Dame with a bye week in between.

Yes, there is an experienced recent head college coach on the staff in Mike Jinks who would work well with Harrell. And yes, there is a former NFL head coach and defensive specialist in Dave Campo who might be able to step in to run the defense the rest of the season if needed.

But that's the kind of talk you can't have, the kind of talk so dependent on how well you did or did not look prepared for your last game. Either you're the guy or you're not. This cannot go on much longer like this.

Lynn gave Clay a pass in November. But no one else will.

*** To contact Dan Weber, email weber@uscfootball.com.