The Eye Test: The Chip Kelly Era Reaches Its Nadir With Loss to Arizona State

After six years, UCLA fans should be used to this sort of performance.

Moliki Matavao with one of the more positive passing plays for the Bruins on the day. (Photo credit: uclabruins.com)

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There’s a certain poetry when it comes to UCLA football.

In 2017, the Bruins went on the road to play a middling Utah team and got absolutely destroyed. The loss was a portent of the future in many respects, as it became the final backbreaking loss in the Jim Mora era at UCLA, and Mora would eventually be fired a few weeks later.

In 2011, you could point towards a whole host of games that signaled the end (50-0 being the most obvious) but the point of no return came earlier in the season, when the Bruins went on the road to play an Arizona team that had just fired their coach and would go on to have a bad year. The Bruins were run right off the field, and Rick Neuheisel had to spend the rest of the year defending his job status.

Again in 2007, you could point to a myriad of losses, including a road loss to a middling Washington State team that was uncompetitive, but the one that stands out is the loss at home to Notre Dame, when the Bruins came into the game riding high and immediately faceplanted against a subpar Fighting Irish squad. All remaining hope for the Karl Dorell era evaporated on that day.

The point is, there’s always a game that happens in the final season that finally causes the fanbase to flip the switch and decide that enough is enough and it’s time for a change. The moment in time where the entire fanbase finally gives up and demands for a change to be made. I don’t think the game against Arizona a week ago fit the description, because Arizona is an ascendent team this season and the game was on the road.

This game against Arizona State, however, fits the bill perfectly.

Just like last week’s Eye Test, there probably won’t be detailed breakdowns in every section because, frankly, I don’t have the heart to do it with this group anymore. I’m so tired of the Chip Kelly era and the ways that it routinely fails the players and fanbase.

Offense

Quarterback: C-

Just quickly here, but I can’t blame Collin Schlee for this performance because the realists among us knew he was a limited option at quarterback. He can run, and this game might have been worse without his running ability, but he’s not a good passer by any stretch of the imagination at the P5 level, and with Chip Kelly calling an inordinate amount of passes despite the success of the run game early on, Schlee had no real chance to find success.

And, for those keeping track at home, Ethan Garbers is injured and Dante Moore clearly did not pass concussion protocols despite what Kelly might have said after the game. I am giving you permission to question the words of a man who has released the same exact depth chart since Week 1.

Receivers: B

Of all the people who should get to fight Chip Kelly after this season, J.Michael Sturdivant may be near the top of the list. Sturdivant is an absolute stud of a receiver, and Kelly simply refuses to get him the ball, and we’re instead seeing walk-on Ryan Cragun get double the targets. No offense to Cragun, but there is no healthy program in the country where he should be seeing that many targets considering the talent in the receiver room. Pretty clear why UCLA has failed to attract high-end receiver talent under Kelly at this point, because he clearly has no idea how to utilize it.

Offensive Line: F

Yeah…yeah. It’s just not good, and while Schlee was able to mitigate some of the issues just due to his legs, at the end of the day this group routinely failed to get the one-yard push it needed, and that’s gonna get you an F every time. Probably doesn’t help that they’ve now gotten a third quarterback injured this year.

Overall: D-

Second week in a row that this group has been graded this low, but this time I don’t think it was necessarily their fault. There were things working offensively, and then the coaching staff decided to screw the group over by going away from those things. No wonder team morale is in the gutter.

Defense

Overall: C-

The defense has really come back down to earth in recent weeks, through no fault of their own. I think we’re just finally seeing teams with offensive coaching staffs that understand what the weaknesses of the defense are and are willing to actually attack those weaknesses. In this game, Kenny Dillingham knew he needed to do whatever possible to neutralize the UCLA defensive line’s clear advantage over a decimated Arizona State front, so we saw a lot of the swinging gate early and lobs downfield against single coverage throughout, picking on the weakness of the UCLA secondary. I’m taking points off because of the backsliding the defense did at key moments, especially on the last major drive of the game where Grayson Murphy committed a typical boneheaded penalty right when the Bruins were about to get off the field, another obvious pass interference on a second third down, and the poor tackling that led to the ultimate back-breaking touchdown. Also, unlike with other performances, it’s hard to be too congratulatory about holding ASU to 250 yards when we knew going into this game how bad their offense was; this was just not a great outing for the defense, but given the opponent, it should have been enough.

Special Teams

Overall: C

I mean, they weren’t asked to do much, but I am not giving out perfect grades for barely falling over the low bar that was previously set. Logan Loya capitalized on a rushed punt to break off a 33-yard return that was promptly squandered by the offense, and Will Powers had a solid day punting the ball. You just wish in hindsight that the field goal kicking was reliable enough to allow UCLA to just take points early when they could.

Coaching

Offensive Gameplan: F

The Swinging Gate was an inspired decision by the coaching staff, recognizing that they were having to go deep on the depth chart at both quarterback and offensive line, and thus using a formation designed to mitigate those issues. The fact that a tight end and running back both took snaps at quarterback and got positive plays out of them speaks volumes to how prepared the staff got the team during the week.

Wait, sorry, I’m talking about Arizona State. My bad. Let me try again.

UCLA had an interesting game plan to start, scripting out a series of runs and misdirections that made me believe UCLA was going to implement the triple-option for the entire game, and it was seemingly working! And then as soon as the script ran out, it was back to the same poor playcalling that has plagued this team all season, with a hilariously high number of passes considering who the quarterback was. It was almost as if Chip Kelly saw my “Chip has never developed a good passing attack” take from last week and tried to challenge it to disastrous results. As I said earlier, I don’t blame the offense as much for this one simply because they probably knew that it would be a bad idea to try and throw the ball, and looked more engaged when run plays were happening. But the downfall of the Chip Kelly era has been his incredible arrogance when faced with an obvious situation.

Defensive Gameplan: C-

I’m not going to say that D’anton Lynn got “exposed” in this game, but this was certainly a game that highlighted his inexperience. UCLA was presented with a lot of new and varied looks by the Arizona State offensive staff, and while UCLA was able to generally keep the Sun Devils from moving the ball with regularity, it was fairly obvious this was more due to talent than anything the Bruins were doing schematically. I don’t blame the coaching staff for having the defense unprepared to defend something like the swinging gate, but the defense in general looked tentative and unsure throughout the game. Worse, the tackling level was down, and it really feels like the defense in general was trying not to make mistakes. I think we’re safely past the idea of Lynn becoming the next head coach at UCLA, but if you were still in that camp, I think the way his inexperience played a part in this loss stands as a huge negative.

Overall: F

You get outcoached by a rookie head coach in charge of a (now) 3-7 team, and you get an F.

Also, the F stands for (Should be) Fired.

Vibes

Vibe check: End of the line

I have a feeling that I’m a bit younger than the average reader here, but beyond that, I work in a high school so I’m exposed to the language of the teens on a near-regular basis. So I’m never sure if some of the words I use are in the common lexicon or not. For example, if I were to describe the atmosphere in the Rose Bowl as toxic, would people get that or not?

Because the end of this game had the feeling of a toxic relationship that finally, mercifully, appears to be at an end. That one side of the relationship now understands that they need to move on for their own personal and mental health to improve. There were some people going through some conscious uncoupling in the stands - the number of people who yelled some version of “**** you Kelly” feels a bit high for what is normally a passive Rose Bowl audience - but the point remains that everyone in that stadium felt that this was over. Now we wait to see if that officially becomes the case.

Final Composite

Offense grade: D-

Defense grade: C-

Special Teams grade: C

Coaching grade: F

Vibe check: End of the line

Final grade for Arizona State Sun Devils: D (1.06)

For reference, here are the past grades from the season:

Coastal Carolina Chanticleers: B- (2.66)

San Diego State Aztecs: A- (3.6)

North Carolina Central Eagles: Pass

Utah Utes: C+ (2.3)

Washington State Cougars: B (2.97)

Oregon State Beavers: C- (1.74)

Stanford Cardinal: B- (2.79)

Colorado Buffaloes: B- (2.61)

Arizona Wildcats: D+ (1.31)

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Normally the Crosstown Rivalry would elicit some form of passion in me, but not this year. Instead, we have two dissatisfied fanbases just playing out the string before what should prove to be an eventful offseason.

Go Bruins.

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