Cal Football Countdown: 83 Days, A Look at UCLA
The march to August 31st continues, and being 83 days away, we look at Cal's final regular season opponent, UCLA.
Spring indicator #1: Year Two of Chip
All programs preach about the value of reps, but the impact is often more pronounced for tempo type schemes like Kelly's (and as Cal fans know well, Tony Franklin's). Count me in the camp that writes off UCLA's 3-9 2018 campaign as a true rebuild, and not an indicator of Kelly's effectiveness as a coach -- the Bruins remained plenty feisty, upsetting their two in-state rivals, and damn near a third. Because of the amount of returning youth, there's good reason to expect a step forward from the Bruins, who are being picked by most preseason polls to be a challenger in the South.
They'll need Dorian Thompson-Robinson to grow into the quarterback job fairly quickly after an up and down year battling with Wilton Speight, but besides him, everyone else is a known commodity, including star running back Joshua Kelley and a some talented targets in Theo Howard and Caleb Wilson.
Spring indicator #2: Growing U
UCLA was one of the worst defenses in the country to end Jim Mora's tenure, rife with tackling issues on their way to a dismal 36.6 points per game average. They ranked in the country's bottom third in every S&P+ category (a per play metric that adjusts for strength of schedule), be it against the run or the pass...and they didn't get much better with DC Jerry Azzinaro at the helm last year.
Some of this can be explained away by the tremendous amount of youth the Bruins had to play -- including Nam Le favorite Atonio Mafi, who could have been offered the luxury of redshirting at other programs -- as they sought to rebuilt the program in their own image, and as with the offense, most of the players will be back, especially in the secondary, where they have multi year starters penciled in; the corner duo of Darnay Holmes and Quentin Gates should be around for a couple more seasons, for example. The biggest needs for UCLA are up front, where they still amid the transition to the 3-4, and in need of pass rushers to follow -- they posted a dismal 15 sacks last season, which was ahead of only one other FBS team, and an oddity, considering their top five linebackers are all extremely experience and highly rated. It was a disappointing effort from the front as a whole last season, as five of the top tacklers on the UCLA defense were DBs, due to ineffective play up front; the now departed Adarius Pickett had 38 more stops than the second leading tackler.
If you're wondering how this second year effort is faring, it seems noteworthy to report that the Bruin defense won out over Chip Kelly's offense in the spring game in April, holding the unit to zero touchdowns over ten drives, and producing five sacks along the way. (We have to take it with a grain of salt and all, since it also might imply that Thompson-Robinson is behind in his development...)
Spring projection: toss-up (true neutral; last year's game was sure to be a win, but Cal turned out to have trouble tackling Kelley, and then self destructed with turnovers in the second half to a 37-7 loss. What I'm saying is weird things usually happen.)