The Eye Test: UCLA Takes Advantage of Unserious Southern Cal Program

The game feels more like an outlier than anything else, but you have to appreciate the Bruins getting a get-right game this late in the year.

The defense was the big story for UCLA against Southern Cal. (Photo credit: uclabruins.com)

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dead cat bounce (phrase) - Derived from the idea that "even a dead cat will bounce if it falls from a great height", the phrase is popularly applied to any case where a subject experiences a brief resurgence during or following a severe decline.

You gotta hand it to Chip Kelly; somehow, he finds a way.

The Crosstown Rivalry always means something, even in years when the teams involved aren’t playing for a conference championship. City pride is a huge deal when the two campuses are so close to each other, and for Chip Kelly, he was in so many ways coaching for his job after BRO decided to run with a story that he would likely be let go by the end of the season. The story gave the Bruins something to rally around, and they were aided by a hilariously terrible Southern Cal squad en route to one of the more improbable results of the season, a 38-20 rout that honestly should have been even larger.

There are a lot of things I want to talk about - like how Martin Jarmond looks inept in the aftermath whether he actually wanted to fire Kelly or not, how the final score is lulling national media into thinking UCLA is on sturdier ground than it actually is, how Lincoln Riley is practicing wage theft and for that I respect him - but that’s not the purpose of the Eye Test. No, we’re here to talk about this game in the micro, and in the micro things were mostly good for the Bruins! I don’t think it is at all indicative of the season as a whole, but any time you can embarrass your rival in this manner, you have to take it.

So let’s dive in.

Offense

Quarterback: B

There’s a fun angle to this game where if Ethan Garbers was just better at throwing the ball down the field, UCLA would get up to the 50s in points and Southern Cal boosters absolutely start looking at firing Lincoln Riley. There were more than a few long passes that Garbers just outright missed that would have been touchdowns, and only once did the Bruins still manage to put points up on the board after the missed throw. Against a better defense, this might have hurt UCLA, but it didn’t. Outside of that, Garbers played a good game by his standards, staying in control throughout and not making any costly mistakes. Considering the quality of the Southern Cal defense, that’s all he really had to do, so we’ll consider this a job well done and move on, though we will always love him throwing up the Fight Down after the last touchdown.

Running Backs: A-

For what feels like the first time all season, we finally got TJ Harden as the feature back, and the sophomore responded in kind with a tremendous performance, rushing for 142 yards on 22 carries. Now, not all of his carries were big chunks, and if you take out his huge 58-yard run, his YPC drops from 6.5 to 4, but even then this was a very successful outing on a big stage, and UCLA should really just make him the feature back going forward. Carson Steele did not see as much run in this game, which also makes sense as he was not able to hit the holes quick enough on the outside where Southern Cal was exploitable, but I’d been souring on him of late anyway so just getting decent production was fine by me.

Offensive Line: C+

Let’s be fair here: this was not exactly a great showing by the offensive line. The Trojan fans I was sitting with have taken to calling any sack by the Southern Cal defense a unicorn because of how rare they are. Well, the Trojan defense had three unicorns in this game to go with six tackles for loss, which doesn’t feel great considering how bad the Trojan defensive front has been all season. A lot of UCLA’s offensive success was thanks to some smart playcalling and exceptional play by Garbers and Harden, and less anything that the offensive line was doing. This has been a problem all year, so I can’t say I was surprised, but still not a great look.

Overall: B+

A lot of this grade comes down to the fact that UCLA was only able to mount three drives longer than 50 yards, and two of those ended in field goal attempts. The Bruin offense really got helped out by some exceptional field positions gifted to them by the defense, and for the most part, they did not squander those gifts. Given what the offense has been doing the past few weeks, this is a huge turnaround, but given the quality of the opponent, we have to temper the positives a little bit.

Defense

Run Defense: A+

Three total yards rushing. L O L

Pass Defense: B+

You might think, “Hey, Caleb Williams threw for 384 yards, that doesn’t seem worthy of a high grade to me!” And you would normally be right. But hear me out.

First of all, Williams was always going to get his. He’s a Heisman Trophy winner for a reason, and he is 100% the Trojans even managed seven wins this year considering the level of suck all around him. More than a few of the completions given up by the defense were simply a result of a brilliant play by Williams, and all you can do in those situations is tip your cap and move on to the next snap.

Second, even considering those 384 yards, Williams and the Trojan passing game had to scratch and claw for every single one of those, in large part because the UCLA pass rush was so effective. The Bruins finished with four sacks on the day, including two by Laiatu Latu on consecutive plays midway through the third quarter that single-handedly ended a Southern Cal scoring threat and felt like a proverbial dagger for the Trojans’ comeback bid. Throw in two more official QB hurries and countless more instances where Williams was forced to scramble and either check down or throw the ball away, and you end with a Trojan offense that was out of sync early and often. And on the pass plays that the Trojans did complete, you could usually count on the Bruins to gang tackle and bottle up the talented Trojan wide receivers. The Trojans have had to pass their way out of a lot of bad situations this year, and the Bruins mostly kept that in check.

Overall: A

What more can you say? After a few weeks where the defense felt a bit overworked and exposed, they turned around and put together their best performance of the season, and that was with Jay Toia going down early with a leg injury leaving the team with no real interior line presence. It simply did not matter; the Bruins swarmed the Trojans at every opportunity, made Southern Cal completely one-dimensional, and even scored a touchdown of their own to boot. If Chip Kelly is sticking around for another year, then the first order of business is throwing the checkbook at D’Anton Lynn to make sure he sticks around for at least another season.

Special Teams

Overall: C-

I mean, we got another missed field goal, and I got to watch Colson Yankoff pretend he’s a big return guy still. But compared to the utter ineptitude that is the Southern Cal special teams unit, it wasn’t that bad. Will Powers had an exceptional game pinning the Trojans deep, with one punt, in particular, looking like he took out a pitching wedge for how the ball simply died at the 1-yard line.

Coaching

Offensive Playcalling: B-

The “fun” part of this grade is that I don’t think Chip Kelly made a ton of changes to his playcalling for this game. To be sure, the Bruins did not try for many of the long-developing passing routes that have been the bane of the offense the past few weeks, but in general, Kelly kept things simple, and that was all they really needed against a terrible Trojan defense. In fact, we saw the return of one of Kelly’s playcalling quirks where he calls the same play multiple times in a row until you can prove you can stop it, doing so with a quick hitch to Logan Loya and then later doing so with a counter run by TJ Harden.

Defensive Playcalling: A

About as good as you could reasonably expect in this game, making the high-powered Trojan offense scratch and claw for all their yardage. This was especially good considering Jay Toia went down with an injury early, leaving the Bruins without a true interior presence on the defensive line. A well-designed offensive system probably would have exploited that issue, but Lincoln Riley and the Trojans were uninterested in doing that, and D’Anton Lynn’s usage of that Amoeba front really seemed to confuse Caleb Williams presnap. As has been the case all season, if UCLA can shut down an opposing run game and generate pressure without needing to constantly blitz, they’re going to find a ton of success, and that’s exactly what happened here.

Overall: A-

Credit should go to the coaching staff for getting the team to tune out all the noise from the previous week and have the team ready to compete against their rivals. That’s not an easy feat, and as shown by the opposing sideline sometimes a team can just quit when faced with any sort of adversity. The most admirable thing about this team is that they have never quit this season, even when let down by the coaching staff at times.

I think there are still deep problems with the program at the moment, but sometimes you need to see a program in a worse spot than you to truly appreciate it. Ironically enough, Southern Cal last year is where UCLA is currently, where they had everything go right and it allowed the coaching staff to ignore all the problems (specifically a weak offensive line and a terrible defense) because they were winning their games. Once one thing (turnover luck) finally evened out and they started losing, the Trojans were forced to take a longer look at the program and started making necessary changes. My fear is that the UCLA administration is going to do a similar thing here, where the sheer scope of their victory over Southern Cal is going to allow them to ignore all the problems in the program in order to delay the inevitable, but that’s a bridge we’ll cross when we get there.

Vibes

Vibe check: Unserious Times for an Unserious Program

I think sometimes we get accused by people outside our readership of disliking UCLA, so even though those people will never read this anyway, I just want to put it on the record that I was at this game rocking my UCLA gear surrounded by Trojan fans, laughing about the entire course of events.

Normally this would focus on the vibes surrounding UCLA but honestly, my takeaways from this game are more focused on the Trojans, who really seem down bad worse than UCLA. The fact that this team won seven games this season is a testament to Caleb Williams and Caleb Williams only, as he was essentially forced to face 11 defenders by himself while also stuck on the sideline watching his defense put on a historic(ly bad) performance. That team will not be good next year; their offensive line is in a worse way than ours, and their defense is not going to have the easy fix like UCLA’s did because at least the Bruins were bringing in talent and practicing tackling, they just needed a new, smarter scheme. You watch the Southern Cal defense, and it’s so clear that they are just filled with players who do not know what they are doing on the field, and that’s a multi-year fix.

I know that the common slam against the Trojans is that they’re a bunch of front-runners, but never was that more apparent than in this game. With nothing on the line except pride, the Trojans constantly looked like they did not want to play any longer as the game wore on. Even Williams, who has had to put up with absolute garbage from his teammates all year, looked like he was over it during the second half. And those wonderful towel wavers, the symbol of Trojan arrogance and unseriousness, went from being exaggerated and boisterous at the start to a stunned silence in the 4th quarter.

If you’re a Trojan fan, first of all, what are you doing reading a UCLA blog? But after that, the thing that should scare you most of all is that Lincoln Riley has no track record for building a program, and after two years with one of the best quarterbacks in program history, the Trojans do not have much to show for it. That’s not a good place to be in mentally as a fan, and I don’t think it gets much better next year, so the Trojans may in fact be in a worse position than us because at least it’s relatively cheap for the Bruins to move on from their coach when they get to that point.

Final Composite

Offense grade: B+

Defense grade: A

Special Teams grade: C-

Coaching grade: A-

Vibe check: Unserious Times for an Unserious Program

Final grade for Southern Cal Trojans: B+ (3.39)

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)

Arizona State Sun Devils: D (1.06)

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One more game for the Bruins, both in this season and in the Pac-12. With it being against Cal Berkeley, I would really like for it to be a victory, just so I can never hear from little brother ever again.

Go Bruins!

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