Lucy and the Football

Trying to reevaluate everything after a dominant UCLA victory over Washington.

Photo credit: Scott Chandler/uclabruins.com

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It is Sunday evening as I am writing this. I sat in the Rose Bowl on Friday night. I still have no idea what happened between UCLA and Washington.

Let’s quickly reset some things. Before the season started, the general consensus was that UCLA should go 9-3 based on assumptions being made about the schedule. That’s what Vegas had, that’s what various national media had, that’s even what I had in my projections, and we all know I am not exactly positive on the general direction of the program. Then the season began, and things started to come into focus. The offensive line looked shaky. The defensive line looked uneven. The secondary was shaky, uneven, and also a disaster. In their first four games, the Bruins played three hapless teams and one with a pulse, and it took a last-second field goal at home to beat that team. This was a UCLA team that, heading into last Friday’s game, looked good but not nearly good enough to compete for a higher spot in the conference.

Then look at their opponent. Even discounting the results of Friday, I think it’s clear to say Kalen DeBoer is a coaching upgrade over Jimmy Lake, and Washington came into this game riding a lot of momentum. They had an excellent offense behind Indiana transfer Michael Penix and a cadre of receivers that have a chance at sticking at the next level, and the defense had been perfectly fine up to this point. They rode a dominant win over Michigan State to a Top 15 ranking, and looked poised to challenge the trifecta of Southern Cal/Utah/Oregon at the top of the conference.

I think it is safe to say the mood heading into this game was not positive for many UCLA fans. Advanced stats said UCLA had a shot, but they were considered home underdogs by Vegas and even the most rosy of prognostications believed UCLA had to force a shootout in order to win. The earliest parts of Friday’s game played into this belief perfectly; Washington drove down the field to score with ease, while UCLA stalled out at the goal line after some baffling playcalling.

Then the rest of the game happened.

As I said, I still could not tell you exactly what happened during that game on Friday beyond the general feeling of euphoria. Offensively, this was not a surprise - Dorian Thompson-Robinson has been one of the best quarterbacks in the conference for a few years now, and combines with Zach Charbonnet to form one of the best tandems in the nation. With Jake Bobo finally coming into his own after a rough first few games and an offensive line that has provided yeoman’s work, there was not much doubt that the offense would put up a valiant effort. It was the defense that stepped up the most, showing off a pass rush that had been missing for most of the season while disguising their coverages just enough to throw off the potent Washington attack. The final score does not do this game justice; it was 40-16 at one point, and UCLA did not punt until midway through the fourth quarter.

This was the kind of game that makes you rethink everything you know about a current season. In fact, I waited until after the games ended on Saturday to start writing this piece just to make sure I could feel confident in my beliefs again. Here’s what I think about college football this year:

• There are only three elite teams in the country: Alabama, Georgia, and Ohio State. Even then, all of these teams have some kind of flaw that leaves them vulnerable.

• There are some solid teams underneath these three, like Clemson, Michigan, and Oklahoma State, but anything past that is a coinflip. After all, Kansas and Syracuse are still undefeated, and Oklahoma is unranked. College football is allowed to be weird sometimes.

• The Pac-12 can be seperated into four tiers: the top tier (Oregon/Utah/Southern Cal), the probably-good-but-with-noticeable-flaws tier (Washington/Washington State/Oregon State), the interesting team tier (UC Berkeley, Arizona), and the garbage tier (Stanford, Arizona State, Colorado). None of these teams are unbeatable; even those in the top tier have some exploitable flaws that leave them vulnerable to the right opponent (see: Southern Cal, who needed Oregon State’s QB to forget which team he was supposed to throw to just to escape Corvallis with a win).

Where does that leave UCLA? They’re in an interesting spot where I don’t think they’re in that top tier per se, but they’re definitely better than the teams below them. The reasons being:

1. As long as Dorian Thompson-Robinson and Zach Charbonnet remain healthy, UCLA will have a shot to win every game they’re in. I might even amend this to just DTR, as he’s been the best player by far for the Bruins and is the emotional leader of the team.

2. The offense itself is elite, especially from a schematic standpoint. UCLA does not possess top-end talent like Southern Cal does, but they do possess one of the few offensive schemes that can overcompensate for those deficiencies and create magic.

3. The defense is…an enigma. I don’t know if the pass rush will be able to be this consistent moving forward, and the secondary still looks very bad even if you consider this recent performance, but if the coaching staff really was sandbagging the first four games in order to hide tape, then things could get interesting. I’m doubtful, but it is at least an open question now.

The question I’m sure every UCLA fan is asking is: “Is this team real or not?” It’s certainly a question I understand and am asking myself. We’ve certainly all been here before; the LSU game last year comes to mind immediately, but you can point to numerous games in the last 20-odd years where the Bruins would put up this kind of performance, get fans to have hope again, and then immediately lay an egg. We even got the now-traditional Bill Plaschke column this weekend declaring UCLA to be back, and even that column was filled with hedging based on the Bruins’ past efforts. And so to answer the question, I’m forced to answer with:

I don’t know.

I’m pretty sure everyone here is familiar with the gag involving Charlie Brown trying to kick a football held by Lucy. The general conceit is that Charlie Brown knows deep down that Lucy is going to pull the football away, yet will constantly find a new thing to anchor his belief that this will be the time he will actually kick the ball. It’s a lot like being a sports fan in general; at some point in time, the ball is eventually going to be pulled away.

Much like Charlie Brown, I know at some point the ball is going to be pulled away. It could be this weekend, it could be in a few weeks against Oregon. It could wait until the end of the season against Southern Cal for maximum hurt, or it could even make it all the way into the postseason. But at some point in the future, that ball will be pulled away, and I’ll be laying in the grass asking why I chose to believe.

Yet I will always point out that every time Charlie Brown runs towards that football it is full of hope. Despite everything he knows to be true - that the end result will not change no matter how hard he tries - he still runs full-speed at the football with the hope that this time will be different, that this time he will actually succeed.

That’s where I’m at with this UCLA team. I know at some point I will be disappointed, but I’m still running forward anyway.

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