The Eye Test: UCLA's Defense Outscores Offense Against Oregon

No but seriously, this offense is terrible.

The UCLA offense in a huddle, probably 5 seconds before the play clock expires. (Photo credit: uclabruins.com)

---

We knew going into the season that this particular three-game stretch of LSU-Oregon-Penn State was going to be brutal, but I don’t think we truly understood the depths of unwatchable UCLA was going to reach before this season started. It is not the fact that UCLA lost again that is so demoralizing, but the way in which they lost which is causing consternation among Bruin fans.

UCLA does not look like it is improving, despite what Deshaun Foster would have you believe in the post-game press conference. The rushing game ranks dead last in yards in the entirety of the FBS, though it is fortunately only second to last when you look at yards per carry. The offensive line is now just rotating through guys in a desperate attempt to find something that works, a damning indictment of the talent that was brought in over the years and the work this new staff did in the transfer portal (you can’t let this current staff off the hook for bringing in two transfers that were supposed to be plug-and-play starters and are instead looking borderline unplayable). The defense is similarly stuck rolling downhill, with a nonexistent pass rush causing a cascade of critical failures. There is a lack of talent at major positions, and a lack of ability from the coaching staff when it comes to trying to put that talent in the best position to succeed.

This is my way of saying the Eye Tests may start getting shorter as this season progresses. There are only so many times you can say things like “Oh wow the offensive line can’t block” without going insane, so in order to protect my mental health I’m going to limit the amount of that I have to write. I’ll try to find interesting things here and there, but in general, I imagine these will start to lose their value as the Bruins pile up bad loss after bad loss.

Anyway, let’s get into it.

Offense

Quarterback: D

Ethan Garbers tried, bless him, but it seems pretty clear that he is hobbled and is reverting to making bad decisions with the ball just to try and make something happen. His first interception was terribly thrown, going behind the receiver and into the waiting arms of a linebacker, and it did not improve from there. What’s more, a hobbled Garbers is even more of a sitting duck behind this offensive line, as he’s unable to try to evade pressure and scramble for yards. Again, not to belabor the point, but Garbers is already limited as a quarterback, and throwing an injury on the pile is a recipe for failure.

Justyn Martin saw some run late in this game and looked ok for what was asked of him. At some point, the staff will need to consider giving him a longer leash to see what he can do, especially if Garbers continues to pile up the injuries.

Running Back: D+

TJ Harden had by far his best game of the season, not just from a yards perspective but just his general look, being more aggressive at attacking holes and grinding out yards. I thought Jalen Berger would be in line for more usage based on the LSU game last week but nope! Only two carries in this one, which was fine. Keegan Jones had one carry, saw success, and was never given the ball again.

Receivers: C-

They were fine, but I’m still confused about the personnel usage. Logan Loya was UCLA’s best receiver last year and was a go-to safety valve that had great chemistry with Garbers, and he can’t see the field this year. It’s not like everyone in front of him is outplaying him - Rico Flores has been fine but not sensational, J. Michael Sturdivant is back to not producing, and Kwazi Gilmer is emerging as a real option - but it astounds me that Loya isn’t seeing the field more. Just another in the column of this offensive coaching staff failing to set the team up for success.

Offensive Line: F

Nope.

…

Ok one thing: for as bad as Eric Bieniemy’s offensive system has been to this point, I think pairing him up with Juan Castillo, a longtime NFL offensive line coach who had been bounced out of the league for his outdated ideas of how to build an offensive line, is a special kind of disaster. Castillo’s concepts for an offensive lineman, in which the line gains a lot of mass to make them harder to move, do not work in today’s football landscape where defensive linemen are much quicker and stronger than in the past and can either run around the offensive linemen or push them back with greater force. You can clearly point to the line being a Castillo problem because three of the five players on the line were starting last year for a unit that ended up as an average line, and they brought in a player like Alani Makihele who started 11 games for a good UNLV squad last year. The fact that Makihele has regressed so much that he is not even playing currently should be damning and get someone fired.

Overall: F

Maybe it’s rare that one unit can play so badly that it drags everyone else down on the overall grade, but when you consider that the Bruins only gained 172 yards of total offense and managed six points in total, yeah, that will do it. You can point (rightly) at the offensive system as being extremely flawed at the college level, but even that is letting the players off the hook for not performing. This is bad, and Penn State has a much better defense than Oregon so I imagine it will not get better soon.

Defense

Overall: C

Look, they can’t pass rush to save their lives and that’s going to be the death of them against any halfway decent offense, but this group does keep fighting and I respect that. Giving up only 433 yards of offense to Oregon isn’t a bad outcome, even if it felt obvious that the Ducks were playing the second half very conservatively after the pick-six to end the first half. And hey, the defense outscored the offense, so that’s something!

The big flaw right now, outside the pass rush, is the coverages over the middle, which theoretically fall on the linebackers, but I have a feeling part of the problem is that Oluwafemi Oladejo is playing on the defensive line so his linebacker replacement isn’t as great in space. Something to consider, but again I would state that if this team had a pass rush this likely becomes a lesser issue in general.

Special Teams

Overall: B+

I’m going to keep dinging this grade until Keegan Jones realizes he should never run the ball back on kickoffs under any circumstances.

Mateen Bhagani hit a 54-yard field goal in this one, and while that thing barely got over the crossbar, it still was true and begs the question of why the coaching staff felt he could not kick a long one against Hawai’i to start the year.

Coaching

Offensive Gameplan: F

We’ve reached the point of the year where I don’t feel the need to articulate the same complaints about the offense on a weekly basis, so instead I’m going to use this space to point out a smaller flaw in the offense.

This week, let’s talk about how long it takes the offense to run a play. This appears to be a holdover from Bieniemy’s days in the NFL, where teams take longer in the huddle and work the pace of play to try and dictate terms. The problem I’m having here is that the offense is doing this too slowly, and ends up breaking the huddle with less than 10 seconds on the play clock far too often. This cascades into a rushed presnap look from Ethan Garbers, who typically does not have enough time to read what the defense is showing and call out protection changes, and more often than not the play devolves into chaos. I'm not sure what the problem is, whether Bieniemy’s play names are too long (a feature of the West Coast offense I learned from The Perfect Pass) or he’s taking too long to get the playcalls in, but this feels untenable, especially when considering that some of UCLA’s best offensive drives of the year have come in no-huddle situations.

I would point out that this is not the biggest flaw in Eric Bieniemy’s offense - that would be the general design and philosophy - but it certainly is not helping.

Defensive Gameplan: D

Even considering the lack of a pass rush, I was pretty confused as to what the defense was being asked to do. Ikaika Malloe had the defense play in a pretty conservative shell for most of the game, content to keep everything in front of them and prevent the big play. Which is fine in theory, but Oregon as an offense lives on nickel and diming the opposing team, and in this game the defensive strategy gave the Oregon offense carte blanche to do whatever it wanted.

One thing I would say in contrast to the offense is that the defense isn’t having major breakdowns. The personnel on the field is, for the most part, executing what is being asked of them. The biggest issue on this side of the ball is just a lack of talent at edge rush, which is leading to a lot of third-down conversions as UCLA continually fails to put pressure on the opposing quarterback. It is not a problem that can realistically be solved mid-season, so if anything it is at least a bit heartening to know that the bones of a solid defense are still present.

Overall: F

A lot of the media questioned the decision to keep putting an injured Ethan Garbers back on the field behind this offensive line, but I think they are looking at this the wrong way. Deshaun Foster only has this job thanks to the players, so of course he’s going to keep deferring to them to make all the decisions for him.

Unfortunately, that’s not what a leader would do. A leader would look at his clearly injured quarterback and pull him from the game in order to not risk a bigger injury. Or if the decision is that the injured quarterback still gives the team the best chance to compete, you adjust your playcalling to compensate for that injury, not ask him to still try and do the same exact things that led to the injury in the first place. A leader would have backup players ready to play, especially since the starting quarterback has an injury history and was already a bit banged up heading into the game.

But then again, Deshaun Foster has spent the majority of his time this season proving how woefully unprepared he is for this job. For a man who passionately declared that he “was ready for this job”, his teams have looked woefully unprepared for the task at hand, and after four games he’s already getting into petty arguments with the media. Practice reports have repeatedly mentioned how low energy the entire proceedings can be. And as Joe pointed out in the SMQB, punting late in the game instead of trying to be competitive establishes a culture that is Dorrellian in nature. It was a garbage decision in a vacuum, and when we write the postmortem of this tenure next year, we can look back at these early days as the main culprits, as Foster has established a culture of “just good enough” and not one of competitive excellence.

Trend

Trending: Down

I think it is a great sign that the Rose Bowl was as full as it was this past Saturday. Yes, there were a lot of Oregon fans, but the student section was pretty packed for their first game of the season, and they were treated to a terrible performance from the football team. Another win for continuity for Martin Jarmond!

Final Composite

Offense grade: F (0.0)

Defense grade: C (2.0)

Special Teams grade: B+ (3.3)

Coaching grade: F (0.0)

Trending: Down

Final grade for Oregon Ducks: D+ (1.3)

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)

---

The good news is that the schedule only gets easier from here, with UCLA playing some random school in Pennsylvania next. I’m sure things will work out fine!

Go Bruins.

---

Thanks again for supporting The Mighty Bruin. Your paid subscriptions make this site possible. Questions, comments, story ideas, angry missives and more can be sent to @TheMightyBruin on Twitter.