Sunday Morning Quarterback: UCLA Needs to Clean Up Defensive Penalties
The Bruins will need to make fewer mistakes because their schedule is about to get much tougher
There really isn’t a whole lot to say after yesterday’s UCLA game against Colorado. The game was a Bruin blowout, as expected. UCLA even covered the 22 point spread, winning by 28.
Was it a perfect game?
No, far from it.
In fact, the biggest issue in this game was the fact that the UCLA defense extended drives on several occasions with penalties. All told, UCLA had eight penalties for 70 yards. Five of those eight flags were against the Bruin defense.
Four of those five extended a Colorado drive. The first was an offsides call on Gabriel Murphy which gave the ball back to the Buffs after UCLA had recovered a fumble by Colorado.
Murphy’s second penalty of the game was his targeting call that gave the Buffs an automatic first down and left UCLA short a defensive lineman.
Laiatu Latu was called for roughing the passer on third and six. McCown’s pass was incomplete. So, if Latu hadn’t roughed the McCown up Colorado would have punted. That penalty along with another offsides call led to the first Colorado touchdown.
The only defensive penalty which wasn’t costly for the Bruins was the last defensive penalty of the game. That was a holding call on John Humphrey about midway through the third quarter. On that drive, Colorado eventually fumbled. So, there was no real damage.
But each of those first four penalties extended drives by the Buffs. Luckily, only two of the four contributed to points for Colorado, but Colorado is not a very good football team. A better team would have been able to capitalize on those mistakes by UCLA, and that’s why Chip Kelly and Bill McGovern need to stop this from happening in the future.
The Bruins have three tough games coming up in October. First, they play Washington and Utah at home before hitting the road to face the Ducks in Eugene. Each of those teams would have made the most of those situations, and that’s why we can’t accept in a win what we wouldn’t accept in a loss.
Let’s take a look at the postgame interviews. All of the interviews from yesterday are courtesy of Tracy Pierson of Bruin Report Online.
In Chip Kelly’s interview, the head coach acknowledged the fact that the defense made some costly mistakes that the Bruins will need to fix. Kelly said, “We have to clean up the penalty situation that extended drives a few times and I think some of the some of their success was really our guys making mistakes. So, we'll clean that up.”
Kelly also mentioned that he thought Laiatu Latu “did a nice job.” Latu had a big game with four tackles and three and a half TFLs including three sacks of Owen McCown. He also forced a fumble. Latu’s interview is also courtesy of Bruin Report Online.
Finally, Dorian Thompson-Robinson also spoke after the game yesterday. Overall, he had one of the most accurate games in his UCLA career. He finished 19 of 23 for 234 yards with two touchdowns and he was 10 for his first 11 pass attempts.
He credited following the game plan as the reason for that success.
Not surprisingly, UCLA still isn’t getting much respect in the national polls despite being 4-0. The Bruins are still unranked in both the AP and USA Today polls.
I think you can chalk that up to the fact that three of the first four games on the schedule were against extremely weak opponents.
UCLA received six votes in the USA Today poll and three votes in today’s AP Poll.
The next three games will go a long way towards determining whether the Bruins get some respect. The Washington Huskies are ranked 15th by the AP and 18th by USA Today this morning while Utah is 12th and 13th, respectively. Then, after the bye week, UCLA faces the Oregon Ducks who are 13th and 15th this morning.
A win on Friday night should allow the Bruins to break into both Top 25 polls come next Sunday. Then, the games against Utah and Oregon will determine where things stand prior to their weakest Pac-12 opponents.
Kickoff against Washington is scheduled for Friday night at 7:30 pm PT.
Go Bruins!!!
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Fourth game in and Chip is still saying "we need to clean things up." The mistakes are instilled in the program.
"I think you can chalk that up to the fact that three of the first four games on the schedule were against extremely weak opponents."
More like every game of the first four against weak opponents. I still cannot call S. Alabama a strong or even average opponent. They just looked good because they played against, well, us...