UCLA Football 2025 Season Preview, Part 2: The Fight for a Bowl Game
In Part 2 of our season preview, we take a look at the schedule and try to figure out some expectations for the season.
Welcome back to our 2025 season preview for UCLA Football. In Part 1, we broke down all the new faces on both the coaching staff and the field, and trust me when I say there are a lot of them. Here in Part 2, we’ll break down the schedule and set out some general expectations for this season.
Let’s get into it!
2025 Schedule
8/30 - vs. Utah
Ah, I see we’re starting tough out the gate this year.
Utah had a nightmare season in 2024, cycling through three quarterbacks and never really finding any semblance of solid play. Kyle Whittingham had to deal with retirement rumors throughout the year and into the offseason, but anyone who thought he’d be going out on such a low note is kidding themselves. The Utes have been the model of consistency for the past decade, and it is easier to view last season as more of a blip than anything. Utah’s offense was a major problem, but now that the Cam Rising era is officially over, the Utes acted decisively, bringing in Devon Dampier and his OC Jason Beck from New Mexico, where they had an offense that ranked 56th in the country, which is really good considering the talent level New Mexico normally operates with (and we’ll talk about them later!). Now you combine that with an offensive line that might be one of the best in the country, and it becomes a big problem. The Utah defense loses a lot of pieces from last year, but I refuse to pretend this unit won’t still be good.
Point is, this Utah team is a trendy pick to win the Big 12 for a reason. Throw in Whittingham setting up a revenge year before riding out into the sunset, and I don’t like UCLA’s chances here. The offense is going to take time to gel, especially a brand new offensive line, and Utah has too much program consistency to think they won’t be more locked in. If this game was later in the year, maybe I give the Bruins more of a shot, but as a season opener, I’m not optimistic.
9/6 - @ UNLV
Fun thought experiment: Florida finishes the job and hires Chip Kelly back in 2017, and UCLA pivots to Dan Mullen, switching up who ends up where. In this scenario, I think UCLA ends up in a much better situation than they are right now.
In fact, it would not shock me if Mullen ends up high on a future UCLA coaching search list. He’s a solid coach who is known for doing more with less in situations where he is not the biggest name in the area (in Mullen’s case, he was the Mississippi State coach during Ole Miss’s first run under Hugh Freeze, and was able to drag the Bulldogs to multiple Top 25 finishes). I don’t think he’s long for UNLV, as this feels very much like a reestablishment job before he rejoins the P4.
That said, UNLV is in a mini-rebuild after Barry Odom spent the past few years reminding everyone that he is, in fact, a good coach. Odom is off to Purdue, and while Mullen is a good coach, the Rebels are dealing with the horrors of the transfer portal and have a ton of new pieces they’re trying to integrate. The Rebels did not look great against the Idaho State Bengals during Week 0, but they don’t have a game during Week 1 before playing UCLA, meaning they have plenty of time to fix things and get healthy while UCLA will be coming off a body blow game with Utah. For UCLA to get to bowl eligibility, this feels like a game they have to win, so we’ll see how the team comes out for this one.
9/12 - vs. New Mexico
I don’t have much to add here. UCLA should win this game, especially since New Mexico has a new head coach, offensive coordinator, and quarterback from last year’s team that overachieved and went 5-7. There’s a ton of new pieces here, and simply from a talent perspective UCLA should walk away with this one. If they don’t…
9/27 - @ Northwestern
Northwestern is still in the rebuild phase after firing longtime coach Pat Fitzgerald following hazing allegations. David Braun isn’t a bad coach by any stretch, but it has become increasingly clear how hard it is to win at Northwestern in 2025, with the school showing it is not an NIL power and stuck in the middle of building a new stadium. They made some upgrades this offseason but, just like with New Mexico, this is a game UCLA should win on talent alone. Coming off of a bye week, this again feels like a “can’t lose” game if the Bruins have bowl aspirations.
10/4 - vs. Penn State
Last year, I said Penn State was as close to a College Football Playoff lock as possible, and the same will be the case this year, though this time the Nittany Lions are entering the season as one of the early favorites to win the title. I’m not going to make any grand proclamations about whether James Franklin will find a way to lose his team a playoff game thanks to his inability to rise to the moment, but this is going to be a rough game. Expect the Rose Bowl to be full of Penn State fans for this one.
10/11 - @ Michigan State
Another sliding door: UCLA doesn’t beat a mentally-weak Southern Cal team in 2023, prompting Martin Jarmond to do his job and fire Chip Kelly instead of publicly backing him, and thus opening the door for Jonathan Smith to spurning Michigan State to come back home to Los Angeles.
Smith is an exceptional coach, and this very much feels like a statement game for him and his program in East Lansing. They have about five games on the schedule where I feel they should win, and then this game feels like a tossup that they need to win to get to bowl eligibility. With this being a 9:00 AM PT start, I would bet on Michigan State being ready for this one while the Bruins are again coming off a body blow game with Penn State.
10/18 - vs. Maryland
UCLA should win this one. I like Maryland as a concept and think Mike Locksley is an underappreciated head coach, but they’re struggling in this new NIL and Transfer Portal era, and UCLA may need a win at this point just to recover any sort of momentum, because the rest of this schedule is rough.
10/25 - @ Indiana
Let Indiana stand as a shining example for what can happen to a program if you just act seriously for five seconds. The Hoosiers finally decided they wanted to play Big Boy football and made an offer to Curt Cignetti, who is an excellent coach with a current track record of winning in college football. Cignetti, in turn, told Indiana what his demands were to take the job, and Indiana met them. This could be you, UCLA, should you choose to act like a normal college program!
Indiana is somehow improved from last year, where Cignetti brought in a ton of talent he had coached at James Madison to establish the program in his first year. Now with the cache of winning, Cignetti brought in more talented players, including UC Berkeley rescue quarterback Fernando Mendoza, who is drawing 1st-round NFL Draft interest. It’s not going to reflect in the final records, as Indiana doesn’t dodge everyone like they did last year, but a return to the College Football Playoff isn’t completely off the table for them.
11/8 - vs. Nebraska
This might be the most pivotal game on the calendar. UCLA went into Lincoln last year and held on to beat the Cornhuskers in a game that seemed to turn things around, but this year’s edition of Nebraska is improved, and with Matt Rhule taking the program to a long-awaited bowl game last season, there’s plenty of momentum. Dylan Raiola should be improved heading into his sophomore year with a full offseason to learn OC Dana Holgorsen’s playbook, and while the Cornhuskers lost DC Tony White to Florida State (still on the radar for UCLA!) I don’t expect their defense to fall off too much.
For UCLA, this feels like a game they have to win. The program has had Nebraska’s number in the 21st century, and between the game being at home and coming off a bye, this will be the freshest UCLA will be in the home stretch.
11/15 - @ Ohio State
Yeah, I’m not even going to pretend UCLA has a shot here. Ohio State is operating at a completely different level than UCLA at the moment, especially from a talent acquisition standpoint. I think there are a few UCLA players who could crack the Ohio State two-deep, but almost all of Ohio State’s players would instantly slot in as an impact starter for the Bruins.
The only way UCLA wins this is if new defensive coordinator Matt Patricia turns out to be a nightmare hire, which isn’t completely out of the realm of possibilities considering Patricia’s track record, but I wouldn’t count on it.
11/22 - vs. Washington
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but Washington is improved from last year, with an ascending quarterback in Demond Williams Jr. and better talent over what Jedd Fisch was able to cobble together in his first season following Kalen DeBoer’s departure to Alabama. Put the game in a neutral site, and Washington is likely favored by a touchdown. At this point in the season, it’s hard to know what both teams will look like or how healthy they will be, and having home field will be a bit of an advantage here, but it is hard to feel confident in UCLA winning this game here. That said, this is probably a game UCLA has to win to get to bowl eligibility. So, you wonder how motivated the team will be.
11/29 - @ Southern Cal
Last year’s edition of the Crosstown Rivalry can be described with a litany of words: frustrating, tough to watch, the football equivalent of watching sea lions fight. It was not a good game by any stretch of the imagination, owing in part to Southern Cal being disinterested at the tail end of a yet another disappointing season and UCLA being incompetent on offense.
Both teams should be improved this year, which could theoretically make for a better game to watch, but we all know there are no rules in place for this rivalry. Heck, the home team has lost the last five meetings in this series. Now, does that all bode well for UCLA, especially considering Southern Cal could once again be deflated heading into this matchup (especially having to play Oregon the week prior)? Sure, anything is possible, but I’m not confident they’ll collapse as hard as they did last year.
Season Expectations
I will be the first to tell you that trying to set out expectations for a college football season is a fool’s errand. There is simply too much fluctuation in rosters from year to year in the Portal era to achieve any consistency in program building, and that doesn’t even take into account normal factors like injuries that can alter the course of a season. I’ve even stopped trying to predict the record in these season previews for that reason.
That said, I do think laying out expectations is still a worthwhile endeavor, as it creates a baseline standard from which you can offer criticism and praise. To wit, the first expectation for this season is pretty clear:
Make a bowl game: UCLA went through a major shift this offseason, both in the coaching staff and the roster. There is much more talent in place, and the coaching staff better reflects the realities of college football than the previous season’s staff did. The schedule is also marginally easier; UCLA swaps Oregon for Ohio State and still plays Penn State and Indiana, but they get Utah at home instead of traveling to Baton Rouge to play LSU in non-conference, and they get Washington and Nebraska at home. If last year’s team topped out at 5-7, this year’s team, with improved talent and an easier schedule, should be able to make a bowl game. If they don’t, then there will be bigger questions that need to be answered about the program.
The rest of this year’s expectations are as follows:
Top 50 offense, Top 75 defense per SP+: Last year, UCLA’s offense clocked in at a miserable 111th in the country per SP+, while the defense at least got to a respectable 44th. Given the improvement on offense, both talent-wise and schematically, UCLA should be able to trot out a top 50 offense by the end of the season. Defensively, while I think the unit will take a step back just due to attrition, the scheme is sound enough that finishing in the Top 75 should be doable.
Keep Fighting: There are multiple pain points on the schedule where a lesser team might quit. Foster deserves credit for keeping the team on the right path last year after a brutal stretch, which allowed them to get within striking distance of a bowl game. That said, this is a whole new set of players, so it is again on Foster to keep the team focused if/when things get dicey.
Don’t Do Embarrassing Things, Part II: If there’s one thing Foster really needs to work on, it’s how to deal with the media. You might be thinking, “he’s a football coach, he shouldn’t have to worry about that,” but this is the job of a head coach in the modern era. You have to sell your program as much as possible, and a coach makes their job infinitely harder by being antagonistic towards the media. If the media likes you, they’ll write about how good a job you’re doing and cover for you if things go south (see: Pete Carroll), but if you’re a jerk to them, the knives will come out as soon as one bad thing happens (see: Lane Kiffin). Brand management is part of a coach’s job these days, so Foster needs to stop being so antagonistic going forward.
Beat Southern Cal: Always an expectation.
Progress is very much the name of the game in Year Two of the Deshaun Foster regime. In this new era of college football, where players can come and go as they wish and your ability to raise funds for your team relies in large part on your ability to win games, Foster and his program can ill afford another losing season. The team was given the gift of a top-tier quarterback this offseason, and it is on Foster and his staff to maximize this gift as much as possible. This is not a Playoffs-or-bust team, but they do need to show progress towards that goal.
We’ll see if they can do it.
Go Bruins!
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6-6 is doable but sadly 5-7 or 4-8 seems more likely. Anything goes with $C though.