The Eye Test: Deshaun Foster Loses Game for UCLA Against Minnesota

The coaching staff, specifically on offense, continues to let this team down.

Keegan Jones (Photo credit: uclabruins.com)

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UCLA did not lose this game because Deshaun Foster was bad regarding his timeout usage at the end of each half. They did not lose this game because of penalties or a failed offensive system or a lack of talent along the trenches.

No, they lost this game on February 12, when UCLA’s incompetent athletic director was caught with his pants down after Chip Kelly left to become offensive coordinator at Ohio State and instead of doing a real coaching search to find a qualified replacement, promoted the running backs coach with no prior experience to the head coaching position. Every cascading moment of disappointment this season has wrought can be pointed back at that one moment Martin Jarmond showed how out of his depth he is.

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Now, don’t get me wrong: Deshaun Foster absolutely lost this game for UCLA by failing as a head coach on multiple fronts. His timeout usage (or lack thereof) was criminal, his continued trust in a quarterback providing subpar play boggles the mind, and for a coach who constantly promotes the concept of DRE, the discipline is certainly lacking as the Bruins racked up over 100 yards of penalties.

But we’ll get to all that, and more, in this latest edition of the Eye Test.

Offense

Quarterback: D

Look, Ethan Garbers is a gamer and made some nice throws in this game (including that deep bomb to J. Michael Sturdivant to retake the lead in the 4th quarter) but at this point, it is hard to let go of the fact that he continues to make boneheaded mistakes that are costing UCLA points and drives. The first interception he threw ended a probable UCLA scoring drive and gave Minnesota life in the game. The second one was a bad decision under pressure, a problem that has gotten steadily worse this year, and a throw that gave Minnesota great field position en route to a touchdown. If Garbers simply makes better decisions with the ball, UCLA doesn’t need Deshaun Foster to make late-game decisions and likely wins the game.

Running Back: C-

Another thing I’m willing to state at this point: I think we need to reevaluate Deshaun Foster as a running backs coach because evidence is starting to pile up that the success his backs have had was less due to his coaching and more due to Chip Kelly’s scheme (I am including running backs like Joshua Kelley who went off to the NFL and got exposed outside of that scheme). UCLA’s running game is one of the worst in the nation, ranking 131st in yards per game, and against one of the worst run defenses in the Big Ten, the Bruins only managed 55 sack-adjusted yards on the ground. Every running back on the roster looks worse than they have last year (including Jalen Berger, who we have seen put up solid numbers at Michigan State).

The only thing saving this grade is the play of TJ Harden out of the backfield. Harden gained 57 yards in the pass game, and he had to earn every single one of those yards, so credit here.

Overall: D

End of the day, UCLA’s 329 yards of offense is the second-highest total of the year for the team (after the 343 they put up in the opening game at Hawai’i) which by definition represents an improvement, but only in a technical sense. In reality, this offense had a chance to prove they were better than appearances and the past results were due to the quality of their opponents, and the fell flat on their faces yet again. Needing a first down to essentially ice the game, the Bruins could only gain eight yards. Bad, bad, bad.

Defense

Overall: B

The sad thing is the offense’s miserable performance once-again threw away a gem of a game from the defense, which held Minnesota to only 234 yards of offense. UCLA’s pass rush is continuing to improve, moving closer to adequate status in this game and getting three sacks, doubling their season total in the process. The run defense was exceptional, holding the Gophers to 61 yards on the ground at a poor 3.1 YPC, turning Minnesota into a passing offense. Max Brosmer made some plays, but UCLA mostly kept things contained as well.

What is hurting this grade is penalties. For all the good the defense did in this game, the Minnesota comeback was aided by a host of costly penalties by the defense in the third quarter. The defense had seven penalties for 75 yards in the game, with four of those coming on Minnesota’s first drive of the second half. It’s unfortunate, but the defense basically has to play perfect to give UCLA a chance at victory at this point, and they just missed the mark here.

Special Teams

Overall: B

Keegan Jones Stop Running Out the Kickoff Challenge update: he decided to run one out to start the second half and the team immediately picked up a holding call. As usual, taking the touchback proves to be the correct decision every time.

Special teams basically did everything that was asked of them (made some kicks, had some good punts, etc.) but again, I’m going to keep punishing this group until Keegan Jones figures out that he should never run the ball out of the end zone, because the offense is already bad enough without him putting them in a worse position than necessary.

Coaching

Defensive Gameplan: A-

Ikaika Malloe and the defensive staff are the only ones earning their paychecks at this point, having again put together a solid defensive gameplan and coaching up their players to the point that UCLA is starting to generate a real pass rush for parts of the game. The consistency on that front is not there yet, but considering where we were at the start of the season, that’s real growth.

The 234 yards is the lowest total Minnesota has gained this year. It’s a credit to the defense for getting to that point, and for doing their best given the terrible situations the offense kept putting them in. This side of the ball continues to play hard even knowing the other side of the ball is failing them, and that’s something to be proud of.

Offensive Gameplan: D-

Overall: F

On a separate note, Ikaika Malloe should get to punch Deshaun Foster and Eric Bieniemy in the face every day until they figure out how to be productive members of the coaching staff.

Let’s start with Bieniemy, who put on another disaster class of a performance by coming out with a solid gameplan and then immediately failing to have an answer once Minnesota countered. The Bruins only had 29 yards in the third quarter and would have finished with barely over 100 yards in the half if they hadn’t gotten the deep bomb to Sturdivant. The offense functionally does not work outside the scripted stuff, either because it is too complicated or because Bieniemy cannot adjust on the fly for what is happening in front of him. The problem is that there is no safety valve for this level of incompetence; none of the coaches underneath him have any experience running an offense, and neither does the head coach, who is forced to simply trust that Bieniemy will make adjustments. Regardless of whether Foster or Martin Jarmond is responsible for the decision to hire Bieniemy, it speaks to a clear misunderstanding of how college football functions that he was even considered, and that no one involved paid attention to his career and was blinded by the resume link to a Patrick Mahomes offense.

As a quick aside, here is a fun image I saw that illustrates what a disaster of a hire this has been:

On to Foster, his end-of-half decisions cost UCLA the game, plain and simple.

Let’s start with the first half, where Foster declined to use a timeout after the UCLA defense got a sack with 1:44 left to force a 4th and 11. As Joe pointed out on Twitter and in the postgame, that changed the dynamic of UCLA’s final drive, as they only had a minute to work with, and instead of getting some shots at the end zone, the team had to settle for a field goal. The worst part? The Bruins went into the locker room with that timeout still in their pocket. Basic math would have told the coaching staff that calling a timeout in that situation is the correct choice, and yet that is not what happened.

Then, moving into the second half, UCLA should have first gone for the first down on 4th and 1 from their own 12-yard line. This gets into the idea I’ve been talking about regarding coaching to win a game rather than minimize the damage of a loss. Mathematically, it makes sense to go for it, and a competent coaching staff would have all sorts of plays ready to gain a yard that isn’t “run the ball”, so this should have been as close to a guaranteed conversion as the Bruins would get all night. Even if you fail, this isn’t the worst thing in the world; you have all your timeouts still and while Minnesota would be almost guaranteed to score, you would at least have plenty of time to answer. Punting in this situation is the passive route, taking the initiative out of your hands and putting the results in the hands of the opposing team.

Following that, Minnesota drove and got to first and goal rather quickly. At this point, UCLA again should have been calling timeouts to try and preserve as much time as possible. Again, Minnesota was almost guaranteed to score points, regardless of if it was a field goal or a touchdown, so preserving as much time on the clock as possible would have been the correct call and not what we got, which was Minnesota bleeding clock while Foster sat around looking like a victim who has no idea what is happening. The fact that the team only called timeout after a stoppage of play was just salt in the wound, and when UCLA ultimately did get the ball back on offense, it was with 27 seconds left, not nearly enough time to do anything with.

This all goes back to the point I have been making the past few weeks, which is that the UCLA coaching staff, starting with Foster at the top, has not coached this team to try and win games, but to minimize losses. In a season where wins and losses don’t matter as much as how you win or lose, playing to minimize losses creates a situation where the team in general does not know what to do in late-game situations, and it creates an environment where the team believes they will inevitably lose, making it easier for that loss to come to pass. If Foster had been coaching aggressively from the jump, it would be much easier to look past mistakes like clock management because they would have been mistakes made in service of winning. Instead, these are mistakes made because the team only knows how to surrender.

The penalties thing again comes back to Foster, and for someone who preaches DRE, it is pretty apparent that there is nothing in the way of Discipline from this team. But you should not be surprised that team discipline is a problem under Foster, because it was a consistent problem in the Chip Kelly era, and the Foster era was sold as a continuation of that era.

I don’t know if I would say that this team would be much better with Chip Kelly at the helm - I think they win this game and are maybe more competitive with LSU and Penn State - but through six games it is apparent that Martin Jarmond’s thought process regarding this opening was flawed from the jump. Jarmond believed that the Chip Kelly era was an example of a healthy, thriving football program and believed that hiring Deshaun Foster would allow that era to continue. What Jarmond failed to see, likely because he gets distracted by shiny things like wins over a bad Southern Cal team, is that this program was deeply flawed for the past few years and only achieved success thanks to some brilliant offensive coaching from Kelly. Removing Kelly from the equation and replacing him with a neophyte coach only served to highlight all the problems with the program and show just how out of their depth everyone involved with the football program is, from the athletic director to the head coach to his offensive coordinator.

This was all avoidable. The only thing left at this point is to move on quickly and start to actually rebuild.

Trend

Trending: Down

Because I love to say “I told you so”, let’s go back to what I wrote in the season preview:

If you are optimistic about the season, this game should be circled on your calendar because it is as clear a pivot point as you are going to get this year. Minnesota is one of the weaker teams in the Big Ten currently, but the Bruins will be coming off a brutal three-game stretch, so it’s hard to say what state they will be in physically and mentally heading into this game. UCLA is very thin at a variety of positions, so any injuries to a starter (such as Ethan Garbers, who has a prior injury history) could make things extremely difficult.

It’s hard to label any game on this schedule a must-win (even Southern Cal feels like a game where it would be nice to win, but not paramount to the trajectory of the program under Foster per se) but this might be close. With the game at home, UCLA has to get a win here, if only to prove some level of resiliency to the fanbase at large. A loss here would feel like the beginning of a downward spiral given how the rest of the schedule shakes out.

In fairness, UCLA did show some early resiliency by jumping out to an early lead, and the defense in general has shown it to be better than it initially believed, but at the end of the day, UCLA lost a winnable game because their rookie coach froze when the lights got too bright. Given how many fans have seemingly tuned out of this product already (the game had an announced attendance of 42,012 with a majority being Minnesota fans), this does not bode well for Foster’s long-term tenure as head coach. UCLA fans are smart, and they know when they’re being sold shit and told that it’s gold. Things are rotten in Westwood, and only a complete housecleaning will solve the problem.

Final Composite

Offense grade: D (1.0)

Defense grade: B (3.0)

Special Teams grade: B (3.0)

Coaching grade: F (0.0)

Trending: Down

Final grade for Minnesota Golden Gophers: C- (1.75)

And as a reminder, here are the scores from other games this year:

Hawai’i Rainbow Warriors: C (1.9)

Indiana Hoosiers: F (0.6)

LSU Tigers: F (0.6)

Oregon Ducks: D+ (1.3)

Penn State Nittany Lions: C+ (2.2)

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Halfway through the season, UCLA has gone 1-5 and their best grade came in a game that they lost by double-digits. And that feels like the tip of the iceberg for how bad things currently are around the program. Attendance has not improved under Foster unless you consider UCLA fans being outnumbered in the Rose Bowl to be an improvement. A recent report from Bruin Report Online had dire things to say about UCLA’s NIL operation and how fundraising has not improved with the move to Foster, and given the recent reorganization of UCLA’s NIL to the Champions of Westwood branding with a specific football-only collective called Bruins for Life, this would seem to track as accurate. High school recruiting is fine but the rankings are still sitting around what Chip Kelly would routinely bring in. Things have gotten so bad that Martin Jarmond, himself under fire and increasingly looking like he will be on the way out in the near future, issued the dreaded Vote of Confidence for Foster amid the spiraling failure of this season.

At least basketball is starting soon.

Go Bruins.

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