UCLA Football 2024 Season Preview, Part 2: Managing Expectations

In Part 2, we take a look at the schedule and try to lay out some expectations for the year.

Aug 22, 2024

Moliki Matavao will be looking for a breakout year. (Photo credit: uclabruins.com)

Welcome back to the 2024 UCLA Football season preview! In Part 1, we took a look at some of the changes the program went through in the offseason, from a new head coach and an overhauled offensive coaching staff to new players throughout the offense and defense. Here in Part 2, we will do a run-down of the schedule and attempt to set some reasonable expectations for the 2024 season.

Let’s get started!

2024 Schedule

8/31 - @ Hawai’i

I think it’s a bit of a scheduling quirk in the year 2024 whenever a Power Four team, especially one in the Big Ten or SEC, ends up playing a road game at any G5 school, but considering how this year could end up, maybe it’s a good thing the Bruins are opening the season with a nice vacation trip to Hawai’i. I don’t think the average fan realizes how down bad this Hawai’i program is at the moment; they’re playing in a glorified high school stadium, the program is under investigation from the state for player abuse by a previous regime, and it is more and more expensive for them to do anything of note. This is not the June Jones program of old, and though Tommy Chung is as good a coach as any to try and get the program back to relevancy, they are still a few years away from that. UCLA should win this game handily; it would not be a good sign for the rest of the year if things are close late.

9/14 - vs. Indiana

The home opener also happens to be UCLA’s first Big Ten conference game, and it is against a team currently rebuilding under a new head coach. That said, I’m a big believer in Curt Cignetti based on what he did at James Madison, and he’s bringing a solid core from that squad to Bloomington to help establish a new culture right away. This will be the first game where UCLA fans may be a bit overconfident in the team based on what they know in passing, but the Hoosiers will be dialed in for this game and looking to make a statement, and they’ll have had two tune-up games to get ready for it. UCLA will have home-field advantage, which may be more pronounced in the new conference thanks to the time zone differences, but this will be much closer than anyone anticipates at the moment.

9/21 - @ LSU

I’ll be at this game! I’m very excited for my first trip to Death Valley, and I’m hoping this is a night game just for the ambiance of it all. If you’re going say hi, you’ll likely find me at the And The Valley Shook tailgate getting payback for feeding that group when they came out here for the first game.

Anyway, this is the first of three games in which UCLA is the clear underdog. LSU is a borderline playoff team with a veteran head coach, and a road game in Baton Rouge is already a tough proposition for the Alabamas of the world, let alone a rebuilding UCLA squad. If UCLA can simply compete for four quarters and not immediately roll over, that would be a positive outcome.

9/28 - vs. Oregon

As if this game wasn’t already going to be difficult enough, UCLA will be coming off a very physical road game while the Ducks will have just had their bye week. The scheduling gods can be cruel sometimes. Oregon is one of the favorites in the Big Ten and feels like an almost-certain lock for the expanded College Football Playoff field. Given they play Ohio State a few weeks after this one, you can almost guarantee that the Ducks will be focused on making sure they go into that game with a perfect record intact.

10/5 - @ Penn State

Who made this schedule and why do they hate UCLA? Penn State feels as close to a CFP lock as possible, with a manageable schedule (Ohio State at home, and the only other ranked matchup currently is Southern Cal) and a ton of talent, and Happy Valley is an incredibly tough place to play at normally. This feels as close to a “Welcome to the Big Ten” moment as UCLA is going to get this season, and the Bruins need to simply survive this stretch.

10/12 - vs. Minnesota

If you are optimistic about the season, this game should be circled on your calendar because it is as clear a pivot point as you are going to get this year. Minnesota is one of the weaker teams in the Big Ten currently, but the Bruins will be coming off a brutal three-game stretch, so it’s hard to say what state they will be in physically and mentally heading into this game. UCLA is very thin at a variety of positions, so any injuries to a starter (such as Ethan Garbers, who has a prior injury history) could make things extremely difficult.

It’s hard to label any game on this schedule a must-win (even Southern Cal feels like a game where it would be nice to win, but not paramount to the trajectory of the program under Foster per se) but this might be close. With the game at home, UCLA has to get a win here, if only to prove some level of resiliency to the fanbase at large. A loss here would feel like the beginning of a downward spiral given how the rest of the schedule shakes out.

(Oh, and if you’re into the idea of parallel universes, remember that PJ Fleck was actively campaigning for the UCLA job this past offseason.)

10/19 - @ Rutgers

“Quietly Average” would be how I would have described Rutgers’ 2023 season, but the fact that the Scarlet Knights are at that point speaks to the job Greg Schiano has done in rebuilding that program over the past few years. I don’t think Rutgers was especially good or anything last year, but they won the games they were supposed to and lost the ones they were supposed to. Rutgers is near the top of their rebuilding path, with a load of experienced talent at every level of the team (even if they just lost their best player Mohamed Toure to an ACL tear this past week) so you should expect Rutgers to win this one at home. Again, if your goal for UCLA is a bowl game, then this is a game they have to steal to give themselves a shot.

11/2 - @ Nebraska

Speaking of games UCLA has to steal…

Nebraska has been trending in a positive direction since Matt Rhule took over last year, with the Huskers looking improved throughout the season en route to a 5-7 record, which somehow represents their best result since 2016 (an aside: good lord what were you doing Nebraska). This offseason, they flipped a top quarterback from Georgia in Dylan Raiola, who just won the starting job. Yes, it’s a true freshman at quarterback, which I’m sure would spook plenty of UCLA fans given what we saw of Dante Moore last year, but Raiola has a pedigree to match his play, and Nebraska feels poised for a breakout season and their first bowl in almost a decade.

This is also why UCLA gets to play them at as good a time as any. The Cornhuskers will be coming off a trip to Columbus, so there’s a decent chance they won’t be at full strength going into this, while the Bruins will be coming off their bye week, so this could be as healthy as they’ll be all season. It’s a recipe for a closer game than it looks on paper, the exact sort of game UCLA has to win for a bowl game to be a reality.

11/8 - vs. Iowa

Iowa has long acted as the gatekeeper of the Big Ten; if you’re a great team, you should be able to out-talent the Hawkeyes and prevail, but teams with less talent or poor coaching have been consistently broken by Iowa and their head coach Kirk Ferentz. This is maybe the biggest test of where UCLA is as a program heading into the Big Ten as any on the schedule, with a few positives breaking the way of the Bruins.

The game is on a Friday night, which means less turn-around for Iowa to travel and be ready for the game.
The game is at the Rose Bowl and not at Kinnick Stadium, which has otherworldly powers that can cause even national championship contenders to fall flat on their faces.

Am I saying UCLA wins this? Not really - this is still a solid Iowa team that is more than happy with bludgeoning you into submission - but the ingredients are there for UCLA to make this a closer game than anticipated, and that could allow for funny things to happen.

11/15 - @ Washington

A second-straight Friday game works out ok for the Bruins; they’ll have a regular practice week beforehand and are traveling to a familiar location. This is nowhere close to the same Washington team that was in the National Championship Game last year; former head coach Kalen DeBoer is now at Alabama, while most of the machine that made that offense hum is now off to the NFL. That said, the Huskies are now helmed by another Ghost of UCLA What-Ifs in Jedd Fisch, and he did bring in a decent amount of talent to try and make this year’s step back less severe. Again, the Bruins are catching an opponent at a good time, with Washington having just completed a two-game stretch where they hosted Southern Cal and traveled to Penn State, so there is again a possibility for an upset.

11/23 - vs. Southern Cal

Throw the record books out the window. If there’s any game I expect DeShaun Foster to have the team ready and prepared for, it’s this one. There is even more bad blood than normal this year, with the Trojans having poached defensive coordinator D’Anton Lynn this offseason, and Lynn turning around and bringing a few of UCLA’s better defenders with him on the way out the door. I would expect sparks to fly throughout this one based on that alone.

That’s what my heart says, though. My head says this could come down to what state Southern Cal is in heading into this game. Last year the Trojans had a major talent advantage but had major coaching and culture deficiencies, so they rolled into the Crosstown Rivalry on a losing streak that UCLA, with a stronger culture, was more than happy to help continue. Southern Cal doesn’t have nearly the tough stretch that they did last year, but with games against Michigan and Penn State having already been played (to say nothing of that opening LSU game that could set the tone for the rest of their season) and with Notre Dame the following week, the mental makeup of the Trojans and their head coach will again be tested. That’s what I would focus on in the weeks leading up to this game.

11/30 - vs. Fresno State

Whoever scheduled this game should be fired, I swear.

There has never been any upside to scheduling Fresno State. You only end up subjecting your fanbase to the worst group of fans this side of the Mississippi (no joke, these people doxxed me after I wrote a satirical article back in the Bruins Nation days) while subjecting your team to an opponent that will treat the game like their own Super Bowl. Putting this game after Thanksgiving is even worse, as the Bruins will have to refocus mentally after the Crosstown Rivalry, which we’ve seen be a problem for this program.

I don’t trust UCLA in this game. I don’t care that Fresno State has an interim head coach since Jeff Tedford retired for medical reasons during the summer. I don’t care that this team doesn’t have a game-breaking quarterback like they have in recent meetings. I don’t care that, on paper, this is a game UCLA should consider a win. The Bruins have lost the last four meetings. They have not beaten this program since 2000. Stop doing this and seek help.

Season Expectations

At this point, it should be obvious that I do not expect this UCLA team to make a bowl game. I think there’s too much going against them, and it would be unfair to DeShaun Foster to expect that kind of performance given how much talent was lost this past offseason and how he was not given a true opportunity to replace it. So this list of expectations will not include a win total or anything like that (the obvious caveat being that, yes, this team making a bowl game would be wonderful and I will be rooting for them to win every game).

What I am expecting from this season is the following:

Development of players: Did the players improve throughout the season, or did they manage to get worse? The offense in particular seemed to stagnate the past few years as the season progressed, so it would be nice to see player development on an upwards progression. That could go a long way to alleviating concerns on the recruiting trail as wins become hard to come by.
Development of coaching staff: Too often during the Chip Kelly era, the coaching staff showed an unwillingness to adapt, either to changing tactics from opponents or to any deficiencies or strengths of their roster. In particular, I lamented how often it appeared the coaching staff refused to scout itself in the lead-up to important games. There are a bunch of coaches who need to prove themselves to various degrees, from DeShaun Foster showing he has the chops to be a head coach, to Eric Bieniemy proving he can pilot a successful offense without the best quarterback in the world, to the defensive coaches proving they are more than one coordinator. Can this coaching staff show progress throughout the season?
Competitive drive: Did this team quit or not? As I said, that Minnesota game should be critical in determining whether this team has the culture to withstand a rough patch or will roll over when things get tough. If this team competes for four quarters each game, I won’t mind as much if they get beat by more talented or experienced opponents.
Don’t Do Embarrassing Things: This is an on-and-off-the-field situation. It should be a little easier to not do embarrassing things on the field; as long as the Bruins display competency, you can chalk a blowout loss up to talent and safely move on. But off-the-field will be the bigger test. While I don’t think it will ultimately matter in the grand scheme of things, Foster’s press conference at Big Ten Media Days is a good example of what not to do. If the losses start piling up, Foster and the staff must maintain composure and sell a process to fans and recruits; lashing out or getting defensive will only make the noise worse.
Beat Southern Cal: Or at least make it as miserable as possible for the Trojans.

This is as close to a Year Zero as you can get in the modern college football landscape. DeShaun Foster and staff have to navigate a tricky schedule with a suboptimal roster as best as possible, and then come out the other side firing. You should not judge this season based on wins and losses, but rather on what the program can do come December and January. That will be a bigger indication of Foster’s long-term trajectory at the school than anything he does on the field this year.

Here’s to a building block season!

Go Bruins!

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