Alex Grinch is back for Year 2 as USC’s defensive coordinator.

Listening to coach Lincoln Riley talk back in January, that return was never really in question. But as USC’s defense fell apart to close out the 2022 season and back-to-back opponents posted back-to-back 40-point games to hand the Trojans back-to-back losses, Grinch became public enemy No. 1 in USC circles.

Grinch met with reporters on Tuesday of this week for the first time since the Cotton Bowl loss in January. He said he was in the office a day after that loss diagnosing what went wrong.

“You rip the Band-Aid off real quick,” Grinch said. “You start with the negative. That’s the appropriate thing to do.”

Explosive plays were killer. Missed tackles were back-breaking and compounded issues.

USC went out and added six players from the transfer portal on the defensive side of the ball. That group includes former All-Big 12 linebacker Mason Cobb and former 5-star defensive lineman Anthony Lucas.

“We’ve got a lot of new players that are exciting, and we feel like they are going to make a really strong impact,” Riley said this week. We’re trying to do what we can to mold those two together (newcomers and returners) and create the type of defense that we feel like we can have. I’ve been very pleased with the progress defensively this offseason. Our guys are really bonding together. They sense that we have a chance to be a really good group.

“A lot of times adversity or challenges like that can really pull people together in ways that sometimes success has a hard time of doing. The coaches have done a really nice job. We’ve made some adjustments with the roster. We’ve got a great plan. We’ve executed well up to this point. The practices at this point have been completely back and forth. Probably won a little bit more by the defense, but it’s been back and forth and extremely competitive.”

Grinch won’t have last year’s sacks leader, Tuli Tuipulotu. He won’t have one of the premier lockdown corners in the conference in Mekhi Blackmon. And he says the group can’t simply expect to be better because they’re another year into the new system.

“You can’t just simply say, ‘It’s Year 2, so all things are going to be better — just the natural progression, we’re older, we’re better,’” Grinch said. “So we describe it to the guys, it can’t be Year 1, 2.0. … Believe me, everyone loves Year 2 compared to Year 1. But that’s not the magic elixir, either.

“We have a responsibility to stack days and work harder. But there’s a bigger unit, there’s a stronger unit, and I think it’s a very confident unit.”