LOS ANGELES — It was 20 minutes after USC’s loss at Stanford earlier this month when Clay Helton faced a room of reporters outside the stadium. Helton first glanced at a sheet of paper lined with discouraging statistics before speaking into a pair of microphones.
The defeat was still fresh. The Trojans had scored their fewest points in a game in more than two decades.
But Helton did not emit frustration. Seated between linebacker Cameron Smith and wide receiver Michael Pittman, the Trojans’ coach first complimented his players before delving into the loss.
“I’m very proud of our kids and how they competed tonight,” Helton said. “I thought they competed like warriors.”
The postgame scene flashed a frequent side of Helton’s personality. Without fail, Helton has kept consistently upbeat, even amid losing stretches such as a currently wearying two-game skid – the first time since 2000 that USC has dropped consecutive games by double-digits.
Helton’s hope is to invigorate a 1-2 team and spark a turnaround with the consistent approach.
It worked before.
In 2016, the Trojans started 1-3, before winning nine straight games to finish 10-3 with a Rose Bowl triumph. The reversal of fortunes included Sam Darnold’s emergence as the starting quarterback.
When Helton took over as the interim coach for Steve Sarkisian in 2015, six days before facing rival Notre Dame, they were 3-2. The Trojans lost the rivalry game, but they won five of the next seven games to reach the Pac-12 championship game.
Helton’s unrelenting positivity with players, no matter the season’s circumstances, has been his enduring trait.
“It always came from my dad,” Helton said. “He always taught me that they’re going to react how you react. If you’re down and you look defeated, they’re gonna know.”
“If I had anything to do with helping him with that, then I guess I did my job as a dad,” his father, Kim, remarked in a phone interview from Florida on Wednesday.
Helton has often cited his father as a predominant influence, and he spent significant time around him during his formative years in coaching. When Kim was the head coach at Houston in the 1990s, Helton was first a backup quarterback for the Cougars, then later hired as an assistant.
In the following years, in particular since he replaced Sarkisian at USC, Helton has sought the upbeat approach as a method for rallying his team.
“Getting over adversity as an individual is one thing,” Kim said. “But to get over adversity when it’s a group involved, it’s a team involved, that’s a lot of personalities. I think Clay’s a very solid guy as far as the fact that it hurts when you don’t win. He knows it hurts. It hurts him. It hurts me. It hurts everybody. But the bottom line is, if he’s gonna fix it, you gotta get on about fixing it. You gotta get your butt off the ground, get a positive attitude.”
The circumstances are rare for Helton to lament past performances.
After the Trojans’ loss at Texas on Saturday night, a reporter asked Helton if he thought any players were underachieving.
Helton side-stepped the question. He instead raved about starting safety Marvell Tell, who remained on the field throughout the blowout.
“I thought he was just a warrior,” Helton said.
Most of his public comments contain hopeful refrains, part of a glass-half-full outlook.
“If he’s gonna panic, or he’s gonna be afraid, or act like they can’t do it, then how the hell are they gonna do it?” Kim said. “You’re never going to see that from him.”
Players remark they like the frequent encouragement.
“You gotta have a guy that’s able to keep your team’s head up,” senior tight end Tyler Petite said.
They also take criticism more seriously when it does arrive, Petite thought, such as Monday’s practice when Helton strived to spur the players on by dropping some rare expletives.
“He has pretty even-keeled demeanor,” Petite said. “He’s a pretty positive guy, but when he does get up in you, you better be listening and you better fix something.”
Those rare moments, though, are mostly in private, during team meetings and at practices.
Fans are instead left to mostly view the snapshots of Helton’s cheerful public demeanor, which has grown more wearing on fans through the first three weeks of this season. Many have expressed frustration with the slow start and an offense that has been muddied in struggles.
“There’s this kind of perception that there’s a softness,” said Ryan Abraham, the publisher of USCFootball.com, which includes a popular fan message board. “You don’t hear the fire and the brimstone, and I think they’re just kind of tired of it. It’s fine when you’re winning. but when you’re not, it’s an easy thing to point to.”
Helton, though, was resolved this week.
“I don’t want the mistake of being upbeat to say that I don’t have a care, a concern and an effort level to make sure that our seniors are not Pac-12 champions again,” Helton said.
QUICK HITS
Senior running back Aca’Cedric Ware has dealt with nagging knee pain this week, but he is expected to play Friday night against Washington State. … “It flared up earlier in the week, so we limited his reps,” Helton said after practice Wednesday. “He looked better today.” … Starting left tackle Austin Jackson returned to practice after he had been out Tuesday with an illness.