UCLA Chops Trees, Defeats Stanford 42-7
This stopped being a competitive game by the end of the 1st quarter.
The UCLA Bruins went up to the Farm, beat the brakes off of Stanford 42-7, and now we don’t have to play this school ever again if we don’t want to.
Ok, that’s a bit pithy, but it’s late and this game was putting me to sleep.
That said, there’s really not much to say about this game. The Bruins were by far the better team top to bottom, and it would have taken a catastrophic collapse for this to have been a competitive game. Obviously, as UCLA fans who watched the past few decades, everyone braced for such an event to occur, but this Stanford team is not the same as the past ones that live on in our collective nightmares. They have a terrible defense and an offense that struggles to put together long drives, and that’s what we saw in totality in this game. The Bruins were able put together 503 yards of offense rather effortlessly, while the defense held the Cardinal to 292 yards, only 24 of which came on the ground.
The big story, of course, is that Ethan Garbers took the field as the starting quarterback. I have thoughts on this, probably something I can flesh out for its own article or in the Eye Test, but for now it should be noted that Garbers played mistake-free football, which is all he really had to do in the situation because UCLA just plain out-talents Stanford at most positions. He threw some catchable balls, going 20-28 for 240 yards and two touchdowns, but crucially there were no interceptions. Chip Kelly stated after the game that Dante Moore was a bit banged up and that Garbers had taken more of the first-string reps during the week of practice, but I have to imagine Garbers was unwilling to burn his redshirt year if he wasn’t guaranteed a chance to start the rest of the season. This will be something to monitor going forward, especially as UCLA moves away from playing the three best defenses on its schedule (two on the road) with Moore to playing some bad defenses with Garbers.
The UCLA rushing attack was not great in this one. Birthday boy Carson Steele had three touchdowns on the day but only 76 yards on 20 carries for a measly 3.8 YPC. TJ Harden was not much better; he finished with 55 yards on 12 carries but if you take away his one long run of 22 yards, his YPC dips down to three. It did help the run game that Ethan Garbers was able to positively contribute, but his runs were not designed runs like we saw from Collin Schlee the past few weeks, but rather simple QB scrambles when the pocket got bad (speaking of the pocket, the offensive line felt fine on first watch. Not exceptional, but fine).
If you were just going by the statsheet, the defensive effort would have some good and bad. Obviously allowing less than 300 yards of offense is pretty good, and when you throw in four sacks and two turnovers, it reads as a pretty good day at the office, but giving up 268 passing yards is not ideal. That said, most of those came in the second half when the game was essentially over, so it’s not surprising that the defense would let off the throttle a bit. The lone Stanford touchdown came in the second half as well to cut the lead to 35-7, for those keeping track at home.
Honestly, it’s hard to take too much from this game, because Stanford is a bad football team currently. It was a nice get-right game for the Bruins, and on a spiritual level I’m sure UCLA fans are happy to end the Stanford series for now with an absolute shelling of the Cardinal, but in terms of what this means for the rest of the season? It’s hard to say, and maybe that’s ok. We don’t need to make major judgments based on a game that was never close. Let’s just enjoy the win and move on to Colorado.
Oh, and Southern Cal lost in hilarious fashion. That probably counts for something as well.
Go Bruins!
Thanks again for supporting The Mighty Bruin. Your paid subscriptions make this site possible. Questions, comments, story ideas, angry missives and more can be sent to @TheMightyBruin on Twitter.
Moore has the talent and is going to be a very good QB, but the jump from high school to Division I is huge and almost wish he had been redshirted this year. The mistakes didn't just cost points, they were demoralizing. Garbers isn't spectacular but has had solid moments when given the opportunity.
Am I the only one who came away more concerned about this game than everyone else? It felt like the refs were trying to bury Stanford early with some questionable penalties. The procedural errors I understand, but it felt like every time Stanford was starting to put a drive together or get a stop there was a questionable holding call.
Fina got manhandled a couple of times in pass pro...and frankly I’m still concerned about the offensive line. I do wonder how much trouble Dante would have had tonight vs Chase but Garbs did all the right things. Happy for the guy and I hope this helps Dante’s development. Nice to see us getting the ball more to J. Mike and Ford. Chip might be right about us having the deepest TE room in the country.
Defense looked solid and I’m really encouraged by how much the secondary has improved this year. Ramsey is a gamer and I’m glad we have him at the starting safety spot. Our front seven...running out of words to describe them.
I guess we should be happy that we didn’t go through what Washington went through last night. Let’s take care of business against Colorado next week.