Kennedy Urlacher #9 of the USC Trojans celebrates after a sack during an NCAA Football game against the Fresno State Bulldogs on September 4, 2026 at The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles, California.

LOS ANGELES -- Lincoln Riley’s USC teams have always been known for explosive playmakers on the outside and elite quarterback play that makes the Trojans one of the most consistent offenses in the nation. However, through two weeks, it might be the other side of the ball stealing the show.

That can be attributed to one person: Gary Patterson.

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USC’s defensive coordinator showed just how suffocating his defense can be Friday night, leading a dominant defensive effort in the Trojans’ 39-0 victory over Fresno State in the Bulldogs’ debut game in the Pac-12 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

Patterson, who joined Riley’s staff in January, has brought an aggressive, disciplined identity to a defense that held Fresno State to just 116 total yards and 1.3 yards per carry while allowing just nine first downs. Patterson, who became winningest coach in TCU history over his 22 seasons in Fort Worth, had the nation’s top total defense five times and coached USC to one of its finest defensive efforts in school history. 

“He brings a whole lot of energy to us,” USC safety Kenny Urlacher said. “He just helps us get better each and every day.”

The performance marked USC’s first shutout in nearly two years and just its second since 2011. The only other time in Riley's tenure came Sept. 7, 2024, in a 48-0 win over the Utah State Aggies.

Patterson, who is known for his signature “4-2-5” defensive scheme, a hybrid system built on speed, disguise and discipline, had the Trojans swarming to the football all night. USC recorded five sacks, seven tackles for loss, forced two turnovers and ended the game with a turnover on downs that preserved the shutout.

“That red zone stop at the end was tremendous,” Riley said. “That’s something we’ve really been emphasizing heavily.”

Perhaps the most impressive feat came from USC’s ability to put points on the board without the offense touching the football. The Trojans recorded two safeties in a single game, something that did not happen in college football in all of 2025.

“I don’t know that for as long as I’ve been a coach if we’ve ever had two [safeties] in a game,” Riley said. “That was pretty darn cool.”

Junior safety Kennedy Urlacher, the son of NFL Hall of Fame linebacker Brian Urlacher, played a major role in the blowout victory.

Urlacher finished with two sacks, a forced fumble and a safety, the latter coming when he slammed Fresno State quarterback Jayden Mandal out the back of the end zone to give USC a 16-0 lead.

“He’s [Urlacher] a high energy, high effort player,” Riley said. “Once he turns it loose, you feel his speed and physicality on the field.”

Urlacher’s safety came as a result of the instant pressure generated up front. Junior defensive tackle Jide Abasiri beat a double-team block up the middle on third-and-23, forcing Mandal to roll out to his right, where Urlacher was waiting to knock the Bulldog quarterback out of bounds for two points.

“It’s good to see guys like KU [Kenny Urlacher] make plays,” Abasiri said.

The defensive showing was especially notable after USC allowed 23 points in the fourth quarter against San José State last week. Despite that late-game lapse, the Trojans have been dominant defensively for seven of their first eight quarters this season, allowing just three total points with the starting unit on the field.

That collective execution is what has allowed the Trojans to play with the speed and physicality that has defined his defenses throughout his career. Through two weeks, USC has shown the ability to pressure the quarterback, force negative plays and create turnovers while remaining disciplined on the back end.

Now, the challenge will be sustaining that standard as the Trojans march toward the heart of their schedule. The junior defensive tackle discusses how the defense can build off the dominant performance.

“It ultimately boils down to everyone doing their job,” Abasiri said.

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The George W. Bush administration and its camp followers in the media sold the Iraq War with lies and spin. Before the war, hawkish pundits such as CNN host Fareed Zakaria and New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman promised that it would bring reform to the Arab world. Once the war started, Fox News host Brit Hume gloated that critics got it "completely wrong," and his colleague Tony Snow declared a "relatively bloodless victory"—two statements that aged very badly as the new Iraq collapsed into decades of war, with U.S. troops in the line of fire.

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So it went in Iran. Pro-war journalists and TV talking heads predicted that the Iranian government would collapse at the first push. Once the war started, they ignored signs that things were not going as planned. Unlike the Iraq War, the war in Iran has not turned into a drawn-out insurgency. The U.S. did not even topple the government, instead accepting a ceasefire after four weeks. But that ceasefire did not hold. At press time, the U.S. and Iran were fighting over the Strait of Hormuz, a key chokepoint for trade that had been fully open before the war.

***

Before the U.S. attacked Iran on February 28, a chorus of media personalities, including several with direct lines to President Donald Trump, argued that a war with Iran would last only a few days. Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen predicted that the Iranian government would quickly fall because "the Iranian people are the boots on the ground." Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told The Hugh Hewitt Show that Ali Khamenei, then Iran's supreme leader, would not fight back because "that's the end of his regime." Fox News host Mark Levin claimed Iran physically couldn't fight back.

Reza Pahlavi, the crown prince of Iran overthrown in the 1979 revolution, was frequently featured on Fox News as a pro-war Iranian voice. Although he had some support among Iranians, the suburban dad formerly known as prince was making wild promises he couldn't keep. In a February 12 interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel, Pahlavi urged U.S. intervention, claiming he had recruited an army of 100,000 defectors. Not a single uprising against the Iranian government happened during the war.

John Podhoretz, heir to the neoconservative magazine Commentary, at least admitted that his predictions fell flat. In the first hours of the war, he wrote that the U.S. military would leave "quick work for Iranians themselves to kick the mullahs to the curb." On a Commentary podcast four months later, he said "there is no person on Earth who is going to say that America didn't lose the war."

Other pundits simply refused to acknowledge when things were not going their way. Week after week, Fox News commentator Jack Keane said the war would be over in two or three more weeks. Many of these pundits' arguments were simply an appeal to shut up and trust the leader. In mid-March, retired British Army officer Richard Kemp complained in The Telegraph about an excess of "doom mongering." The media, he claimed, were simply "not privy" to the genius of Trump's plans.

On CNN a few days before the April ceasefire, former Bush administration official Scott Jennings said "there is no doubt we have defanged this regime." Zineb Riboua, a research fellow with the neoconservative Hudson Institute, complained a few days after the ceasefire that the West was ignoring the "lived experience" of Arabs, who she claimed supported the war. Public opinion polling from both before and after the war suggested that Arab publics were increasingly rooting for Iran and opposing the war. Riboua also claimed the war was "all about" weakening China by, among other things, eliminating a cheap source of oil. Three months after the ceasefire, China was snapping up discounted oil from Iran's rivals.

Soon after the ceasefire, Trump attempted to pressure Iran further by blockading its ports, and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies published a prediction that Iran would be forced to shut down its oil wells within 13 days, causing permanent damage. Trump repeated a similar timeline on Fox News, predicting that the wells would literally explode at the end of April. That didn't happen.

Many of the cheerleaders for war with Iran were the same people who had cheered on the invasion of Iraq, often with the same arguments. Fox News host Sean Hannity, who predicted in February 2003 that the Iraq War was "going to be over very quickly," said almost exactly the same thing in February 2026: "It's not going to be a forever war. It's going to be overwhelming military might and force, and then it's going to be up to the people of Iran. If they want a chance at freedom, they will have it, I believe, within the next few weeks." New York Times columnist Bret Stephens, who bragged in 2023 about his lack of regrets about the Iraq War, whined in March 2026 about "our inability to appreciate the advantages we now possess."

There is a revolving door between hawkish punditry and government work. Benjamin Netanyahu, testifying before the U.S. Congress as a retired prime minister and private citizen in 2002, said invading Iraq would have "enormous positive reverberations." Netanyahu, who is once again the prime minister of Israel, helped Trump plan the Iran War. Back in 2002, Condoleezza Rice, then the U.S. national security adviser, was pushing the false claim that Iraq was building weapons of mass destruction. "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud," she famously told CNN. In July 2026, Rice was invited to address the Aspen Security Forum about the new war in Iran. "When I hear, 'Well, it wasn't imminent,'" she told the crowd, "I think, 'Do you really want to wait until it's imminent?'"

Fool us once, shame on you. Fool us twice, shame on us.

The post The Iraq War Cheerleaders Were Wrong. They're Wrong About Iran Too. appeared first on Reason Magazine.

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