The Eye Test: UCLA is Good, Stanford is Bad

UCLA continues to do good team things to bad teams.

Matt Sykes catches the ball for a big gain. (Photo credit: Greg Turk/uclabruins.com)

---

I have a confession to make: I don’t actually have a lot to say about this game. There’s an overall point - that UCLA had a good bounce-back game and did what they were supposed to do against a bad opponent - and some smaller things to discuss, but there isn’t a ton to breakdown compared to some other weeks.

That’s not a bad thing, for the record. If UCLA is doing a lot of good things, it likely means the Bruins are winning, and everyone likes it when the Bruins are winning. The important thing for us here is to point out any smaller issues and determine if this is something to monitor for the future (and, spoilers here, but I don’t really think there were many things that fit in this category).

Let’s dive into what might be a shorter Eye Test.

Offense

Quarterback: A-

Receivers: C-

Offensive Line: B-

I’m going to give Dorian Thompson-Robinson a better grade than his stat line might suggest because a lot of that was not his fault. At least five of the incomplete passes he threw on Saturday were straight-up drops by the receivers, with a few others classifying as hard but possible catches. It was an uncharacteristic outing for that group, with even the sure-handed Jake Bobo getting in on the act with a few drops. Adding onto Thompson-Robinson’s problems was the play of the offensive line against the Stanford pass rush, which is perhaps their best overall unit. I’d say Stanford’s pass rush is at the level of Utah, which makes it a bit concerning that the offensive line had such a poor performance in containing it. Thompson-Robinson took way too many hits against an outmanned opponent to feel comfortable, and while I know no one wants to let on, you could see that he was not close to 100% by the time he exited the game, as DTR even spent some time in the injury tent between series.

Still, there were positives here. The offensive line saved its own grade through their run-blocking, which just completely bulldozed the Stanford front early and often. Thompson-Robinson is similarly showing a much better understanding of when to run and when to take a hit for extra yards, which is contributing to his improved health this year compared to the past.

Running Back: Charbonn-A

Just like last week, this grade is almost uniformly for Zach Charbonnet, who was generally unstoppable for most of this game. Charbonnet ran for 198 yards on 21 carries (a ridiculous 9.4 YPC) and was the leading receiver with five catches for 61 yards. 11 of UCLA’s 17 explosive plays featured Charbonnet in some capacity. Every time he touched the ball, you could expect something ridiculous was about to happen.

The rest of the running back rotation was something. Keegan Jones saw one handoff, didn’t gain a yard, and essentially did not see the field again. TJ Harden saw action for the first time in awhile (I guess the staff is done waiting to save his redshirt?) and had a nice tough gain before he apparently got hurt, which doesn’t feel great. Colson Yankoff ended up getting a majority of the backup touches in the second half, and while he’s not exactly the best option, he at least runs hard.

Kazmeir Allen got shifted over to running back late and kept getting hit in the backfield until he wasn’t, which resulted in a 72-yard touchdown run. Allen still has speed for days.

Overall: B+

It wasn’t the best performance by the offense - the second half started really rough and the red-zone was perilous for the Bruins - but what stood out to me was a sequence in the second quarter where the Bruins had 4th-and-3 and 3rd-and-1 in quick succession. On both plays, Thompson-Robinson got under center (already a wrinkle on the usual UCLA offense) and immediately rolled to his left. Ahead of him was Zach Charbonnet acting as a pseudo-blocker/receiving option. On both plays, Thompson-Robinson was able to comfortably gain a 1st down. It was a play that said “we can mess up but both of us know you can’t really stop us if we don’t want to be stopped”. This is not your parent’s Stanford defense by any stretch.

Defense

Rush Defense: A-

Pass Defense: B+

Overall: A-

I don’t have much to say on the defense - they were fine and did what they were supposed to do - and instead want to talk a small amount about Stanford.

Yes, I know, it’s weird for me to take time to talk about an opponent in any level of detail, but everything Stanford does offensively right now annoys the hell out of me. This is a team that has no idea what it wants to be, which is bonkers to think about considering David Shaw has been at the school for over a decade now. Stanford used to rest its laurels on being THE power football team on the west coast; they would throw a bunch of linemen and tight ends out there, dare you to stop the run, and then throw over the top on you if you overcommitted. It was simple, brutal, effective football, and even if I hated it aesthetically, I at least admired the efficiency of the endeavor.

Stanford football in 2022 is nothing like that. Their offensive line, once the pride and joy of the program, is living off its reputation rather than actual ability, and is trying to open holes for a running back rotation that can safely be described as “barebones”. Tanner McKee is probably a fine quarterback, but he’s stuck behind a bad offensive line and throwing to receivers not up to the typical caliber Stanford has become accustomed to. And to top it all off, Stanford is attempting to copy the slow-mesh system popularized by Wake Forest, except they lack the basic understanding of how to run it effectively. It results in an offense that fails at doing simple things and requires either Herculean efforts or complete disinterest by opposing teams to score touchdowns (the touchdown the Bruins allowed in the 4th quarter was the first one Stanford had scored in almost 11 quarters).

So it’s in this regard that we are grading UCLA’s defense on a curve. Yes, they did fine by conventional standards - anytime you hold an opponent to 270 yards, you have to be happy - but Stanford’s offense is so terrible that it’s hard to know whether this is true improvement or a Cardinal bump for the defense.

Special Teams

Overall: D

Not good! Nicholas Barr-Mira missed a 41-yard field goal, Logan Loya muffed a punt (though in his defense this looked like a borderline breaking of the halo, but he probably should have fair caught the ball to begin with), and kickoff coverage was lax, and that was on top of R.J. Lopez straight-up sending the opening kickoff out of bounds.

Special teams had been a relative strength of the team this year, so maybe this was just a bad game, but all we can do is hope that there’s a turnaround next week.

Coaching

Offensive Gameplan: B

This week’s new wrinkle was apparently speed. That is to say, UCLA tried running way more tempo than we’d seen in the past, to varying degrees to success. I don’t think this was a bad strategy - UCLA clearly figured they could take advantage of the plodding nature of the Stanford defense by running tempo instead of any new formations - but the way it played out in the game gave off the impression that UCLA had barely practiced this concept. Which feels weird, because UCLA has likely practiced a two-minute drill before, but Thompson-Robinson kept snapping the ball before everyone was set multiple times. Just a weird situation.

Beyond that, it was a simple gameplan. Stanford can’t stop the run, so UCLA just ran at them until the game was effectively over. Take away the weird tempo stuff, and this was a no-nonsense strategy of the offense.

Defensive Gameplan: A

Playing off what I said above in the defensive section, Stanford’s offense is bad, so it’s hard to know how much of this was the gameplan and how much was general Stanford garbage play. On top of that, defensive coordinator Bill McGovern was unavailable due to illness, which led to some reshuffling of the coaching staff. Reports are that analyst Clancy Pendergast shifted up to the booth for this game, and while the playcalling was allegedly done by committee, I’d assume Pendergast called most of it thanks to his location. Interestingly enough, Pendergast has historically struggled against Stanford’s offense, so I’d guess Ken Norton Jr. (another former defensive coordinator at the NFL level) was a prominent voice as well.

Given all of that, I appreciate that the staff didn’t overthink this. Stanford is bad, so UCLA stuck to their base defense and sent an occassional blitz that would consistently throw a wrench into whatever the Cardinal wanted to do.

Overall: A-

I’m knocking the grade down a bit for the overthinking on offense and whatever was going on with special teams, but at the end of the day UCLA did what they were supposed to do against an outmatched opponent. They were aggressive when they needed to be, kept things as simple as possible, and raced out to an early lead that the Cardinal were never going to overcome. There were questions about how UCLA would react to their first loss, and this was the kind of performance that makes me more confident in the belief that UCLA is a good team.

Vibes

Vibe check: Nature is healing

An admission: it usually takes me a few days to write out the Eye Test. Most of this is due to scheduling, but part of it is because I like to marinate on the games and try to find some larger meaning from them. Call it a writer’s curse, if you will.

It took me a while to figure out what the general vibe of this Stanford game was, but it finally hit me. I was puzzled as to why I was so ambivalent about this game, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ve finally settled on is that Stanford just isn’t a threat anymore. There was a lot of talk during the game of how this Stanford team is just a shadow of its former self, and while we saw glimpses of the Cardinal of old (the touchdown catch on a fade route likely caused many Bruin fans to experience PTSD), it’s fairly clear Stanford has returned to their typical level of mediocrity. Stanford is in contention for the worst team the Bruins have played this year, which is as sure a sign as anything that nature is truly hearing.

Final Composite

Offense grade: B+ (3.3)

Defense grade: A- (3.7)

Special Teams grade: D (1.0)

Coaching grade: A- (3.7)

Vibe check: Nature is healing

Final grade for Stanford Cardinal: B+ (3.20)

A reminder of the previous grades:

Bowling Green Falcons: B- (2.76)

Alabama State Hornets: B+ (3.47)

South Alabama Jaguars: C (1.91)

Colorado Buffaloes: B+ (3.38)

Washington Huskies: A- (3.71)

Utah Utes: A- (3.70)

Oregon Ducks: C- (1.67)

---

UCLA continues their romp through some of the garbage in the Pac-12 this week when they go face Arizona State. This is probably the most “dangerous” of the games because it’s on the road, but this same Arizona State team did lose to Stanford two weeks ago, so I’m not sure how much of a threat they truly are. Oh well, time to keep winning.

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.