SMQB: The State of UCLA Football Under Chip Kelly

After last night's loss to Southern Cal, what does the future of Bruin football look like?

(Photo Credit: Scott Chandler/uclabruins.com)

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There’s little doubt that last night’s game was a heartbreaking loss for Bruin fans.

Let’s start today off with the postgame press conference featuring Chip Kelly, Dorian Thompson-Robinson and Stephan Blaylock.

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Too often in football, there’s one reason you can point to, or at least try to point to as the reason a team won or lost, but that wasn’t the case in last night’s loss.

Multiple factors came together into a perfect storm of issues that all combined to result in the final score.

You can’t just blame the defense for their complete and total inability to stop the Southern Cal offense because, despite the fact that the defense gave up almost 650 yards to the Southern Cal offense, it was a winnable game. If the defense had gotten one more stop at the right time, UCLA wins.

The same thing holds true for the play of UCLA quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson. To be sure, owned his mistakes in his postgame interview and his turnovers resulted in 10 points for the Trojans. Without those points, UCLA wins.

Then, there’s the bad game management by head coach Chip Kelly. If Kelly doesn’t call the timeout at the end of the first half, Denis Lynch doesn’t get a second chance at a field goal and the Bruins go into the locker room up 21-17 instead of 21-20 and the game probably would have been tied 45-45 at the end of regulation.

But it wasn’t just one ill-conceived timeout contributing to Kelly’s poor game management. Kelly’s play selection wasn’t particularly great throughout the game. There were a lot of early down pass plays called which went incomplete and there were more than a few times when a running play should have been called but wasn’t.

That should be enough.

But, then, there are the systemic issues with Chip Kelly’s program.

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At the end of Kelly’s interview, he was asked measure the progress the UCLA program has made under him in five years to the progress Southern Cal has made in just one year under Lincoln Riley.

Kelly’s response was clearly an attempt to avoid answering the question. He blathered on about the difference between having to build a program and changing things quickly with the transfer portal, claiming that it was “different times.”

He started by saying, “We didn’t have the transfer portal four years ago.” While there was no transfer portal when Kelly was hired five years ago, the portal did launch in October 2018 just a month or so into Kelly’s first season.

Naturally, Ben Bolch of the LA Times followed up by asking, “Does that mean that teams can basically contend for a championship on an annual basis more so now than before?”

Kelly tried to avoid actually answering the question so as not to set expectations too high moving forward, but in doing so, he just pointed out the one of the biggest flaws in his program. Kelly responded, “It depends on how the recruiting goes for you and what you have to be able to lure kids to come to your school.”

What he didn’t say was anything about the influence of NIL deals in recruiting, but it did highlight Kelly’s overall failure at luring blue chip recruits to come to Westwood.

Surprisingly, no one asked Kelly about his inability to draw top talent to Westwood.

Instead, there was just a long awkward pause before Kelly left the interview room.

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Speaking of Kelly, the transfer portal, and recruiting, he has been using the transfer portal to cover up for a lack of recruiting. How bad is recruiting under Kelly? The Bruins, even after last night’s loss are still in both Top 25 polls today. Yet UCLA’s 2023 recruiting class is ranked 66th in the country. How the hell does that happen?

It’s about Kelly setting the proper expectations around recruiting. Instead of having the Bruin football staff hustling and working hard to bring the best possible freshman recruits into the program, the appearance ends up being that Kelly at least look like he doesn’t care about bringing a talented crop of players into the program year after year.

Make no mistake, that strategy is largely responsible for UCLA’s success this season.

A few weeks ago, a wrench was thrown into Kelly’s plan by the NCAA. The NCAA rescinded guidance on midseason transfers and how they count against a team’s scholarship limits. That article from Dennis Dowd of CBS Sports quotes an unnamed Power Five coach. “What that means is they're effectively shutting down the portal,” the coach said. “It's a cluster.” It doesn’t bode well for future success for UCLA.

Kelly’s recruiting, specifically his lack thereof, have forced the Bruins to use the transfer portal to make up for Kelly’s failure to bring in a lot of four-star and five-star kids into the program.

Now, I’m not saying they shouldn’t use the portal. I’m saying that the portal would be better used to supplement a team’s recruiting, not replace it.

Two of UCLA’s losses this season were to more talented teams. What would have happened yesterday if Kelly had spent the past five years recruiting top-notch talent, especially on the defensive side of the ball? We will never know.

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The reliance on the transfer portal isn’t the only systemic issue with Kelly’s program.

The other huge systemic issue with Kelly’s program can be found on the defensive side of the ball.

Now, a lot of Bruin fans are really frustrated with the play of the defense and many of those people are blaming Kelly for “hiring his friends.” That was certainly the case with Jerry Azzinaro, but I don’t think that’s as much of the case with current Bruin defensive coordinator Bill McGovern.

Heck, McGovern had the defense playing well against both Washington and Utah. But McGovern has missed the last four games and UCLA has lost their last two.

We’re still not sure what is wrong with Coach McGovern as neither Kelly nor the Athletic Department have provided an explanation other than the fact that he was “unavailable.” And, we certainly wish him a speedy recovery from whatever it is which ails him.

What we did learn this past week is that Clancy Pendergast has been the guy calling the defense from the press box in McGovern’s absence. So, it was Pendergast’s play calling that was responsible for allowing 650 yards last night.

That makes one thing abundantly clear: If Bill McGovern’s illness will keep him from resuming his duties in the future, Pendergast is clearly not the answer. I will take that thought even further. If Kelly ends up replacing another defensive coordinator after this season concludes, Pendergast is the furthest thing from the solution and his contract as an defensive analyst shouldn’t even be renewed if it’s up after this season.

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Speaking of contracts, let’s briefly discuss Chip Kelly’s contract since the regular season will be over after Friday’s game against UC Berkeley.

Now, anything could happen, but I think Chip Kelly’s job is probably safe for another year. I don’t expect UCLA AD Martin Jarmond to be looking to replace Kelly considering that Kelly would be owed approximately $4.76 million if he were to be fired before December 15, 2022.

After that date, the buyout will drop to $4.06 million because Kelly’s current buyout clause specifies that he be paid 70% of his base salary, his talent fee, and his retention bonuses and, since the full 2022 retention becomes payable on December 15th, the buyout will drop.

There are two more likely probabilities. The first is that, having gotten the Bruins back in the national conversation, Kelly could opt to go elsewhere. If he leaves before the final game of this season, he would be required to pay $3 million to the university, but after the final game of the 2022 season, that amount drops to just $1.5 million.

The second more likely probability is that Kelly returns for another season. After December 15, 2023, Kelly’s buyout goes away completely as does the termination fee if Kelly chooses to leave.

So, if I have to guess, I currently believe that Jarmond will certainly bring him back for his sixth year with the Bruins after which anything could happen depending on record.

But any Bruin fan who thinks Kelly should be fired after what should be a 9-win season after next week’s game against UC Berkeley may be delusional.

That’s not to say that there wouldn’t be a sigh of collective relief if Kelly chose to depart voluntarily after this season. I’m just saying that anyone who thinks Martin Jarmond will actually fire Chip Kelly is crazy.

UCLA is losing 27 seniors after this season. With so much talent departing the program and possibly not being able to backfill next year’s roster from the transfer portal, next season might just prove to be the final straw of the Chip Kelly era if Kelly cannot replicate this year’s success next season.


Go Bruins.

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