Spaulding Report: UCLA Football Northwestern Week Media Interviews
As you wait for today's game to kickoff, we've gathered all of this week's UCLA Football interviews for you in one place.
As usual, we’ll get right to this week’s interviews and see what’s been getting said at this week’s UCLA football press conferences. I’m not going to include the only two interviews from last week since we already published those, but if you haven’t already seen interim head coach Tim Skipper’s first interview as head coach of the Bruins, go check it out.
I’m just going to share this week’s videos here all in the same place to make it easy for you to watch them if you haven’t already. The videos in this article are courtesy of UCLA Athletics on YouTube unless noted otherwise.
As is the custom, we’ll start off with interim head coach Tim Skipper. Regardless of what happens on the field this afternoon, I have to hand it to Coach Skipper. This guy has walked into an historically bad situation with an enormous amount of energy. He comes across with an overwhelmingly positive attitude even though his Bruins have been one of the worst teams in the country this season. It says a lot about him as an individual.
Two things his Monday interview revealed. First, the team went bowling last week on an off day as a team building activity. Clearly, they are trying to get the team to gel around being competitive, both with each other and their opponents.
The second thing is that Kevin Coyle has joined the coaching staff and his first day in Westwood was Monday. A look at the coaching staff on the roster doesn’t list Coyle as of this morning, but Skipper indicated that his relationship with Coyle goes all the way back to his playing days. So, they’ve had a long relationship. Hopefully, that translates into a defensive front that puts a lot of pressure on Northwestern quarterback Preston Stone today.
On Wednesday, Ben Bolch of the LA Times asked Coach Skipper about the “Discipline, Respect and Enthusiasm” branding still being on the fences. Skipper responded:
I think those are words that are always good. I think every team uses those words in some way, and we are doing that by our style of play. That’s what I would say…by our style of play. [It] does all our talking. We don’t have to actually say the words or any of that stuff, but we need to play that way. So, that’s our style of play. Whether we’re here, anywhere, wherever, we’re going to play that way. So, it’s all about the style of play.
Now, over the years, I’ve become somewhat immune to “coachspeak,” but I just have to hand it to Coach Skipper. He did one heck of a job here of saying “We’ve moved on from that.” without actually saying “We’ve moved on from that.” He certainly sounds convincing when he said that. I think it’s about that infectious energy he seems to have.
On Tuesday, two players who haven’t met with the media before spoke with the media. First up was defensive back Key Lawrence and he was followed by running back Anthony Frias.
Lawrence was asked about the effect that Kevin Coyle has had on the defense after two days of practice. Lawrence said, “[I]t’s just bringing another type of of culture that he’s trying to bring in. Understanding that we just need to play as one unit, one sound and one heartbeat. And that’s one thing he’s been harping on. He’s trying to get us fast sideline to sideline and playing smart and physical. So I like it so far.”
Anthony Frias was up next. He really emphasized the team aspect of the game. When asked about pre-snap issues versus executing after the snap, Frias spoke only about the team aspects of the game. He said:
“I trust my O line. They they do great things. The receivers do great things for us. Like everybody’s doing great things. So I wouldn’t be able to just pinpoint those things cuz it’s a team game and no game’s defined by one play. So we just got to keep going and there’s a lot of things that we could do better to help the O line and to help the receivers. And so I just think that we just got to focus on our room so that we can make sure that we have a great game instead of just one play.”
Now, I will give Frias this much. It would have been easy at this point to throw the offensive line under the bus by pointing fingers at them. He didn’t. He actually said that there are things the running backs could do better to help the line.
That’s a new one. I’ve never once ever heard about running backs doing things to help out the line with the possible exception of helping with pass blocking, but I’d argue that that’s more about helping buy the QB more time than helping the line. After all, it is the responsibility of the offensive line to do things for the backs like creating holes for them to run through.
But Frias certainly deserves credit here for not throwing anyone under the bus.
Finally, on Wednesday, Nico Iamaleava met with the media. One of the Bruins’ biggest issues offensively has been penalties. Iamaleava acknowledged that, saying:
“We’ve been in multiple positions to where we start the drive off with a penalty. We get a big play and then a penalty. So I think, just cleaning up the little mistakes, man. If we play a clean game, this whole season could be different.”
Well, he’s right on that. The Bruins have had multiple drives in multiple games derailed by penalties. For a team whose now-former head coach preached discipline as his first pillar, there was none.
And, if they are unable to change that nothing will change under Coach Skipper.
Go Bruins!!!
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Talk is great. What transpires on the field is greater. Let's do it, guys.
In 3 games thus far, 4.3 40 burner, Jaivian Thomas, has had 16 carries and 4 receptions, and there are calls to "establish the run"?
This guy - if he hasn't transferred yet - should be getting 20 carries a game, he's the only back UCLA has capable of "breaking a big one".... These sparse opportunities stand as an exclamation point of the offensive failure(s) to date....GO BRUINS!