UCLA Bruins Stay Undefeated; Crush Colorado, 45-17
The Bruins remain undefeated by easily beating the Buffaloes on the road.
If you watched only the first half of today’s UCLA football game, you saw the important part. That’s because the game was over by halftime. In fact, you could have watched UCLA’s first three drives and that would have been enough.
The game started in familiar fashion for the Buffaloes.
On the fifth play of the game, Colorado fumbled the ball away. It was only because UCLA’s Gabriel Murphy had lined up offside that Colorado ended up not turning the ball over. Instead, the Buffs drove down to the Bruin 36-yard line before the drive stalled. Cole Becker tried a 54-yard field goal and missed it, turning the ball over to UCLA.
The Bruins moved 64 yards on six plays and scored on a 24-yard pass from Dorian Thompson-Robinson to Matt Sykes.
On the third play of Colorado’s next drive, UCLA’s Grayson Murphy was called for targeting and ejected. Four plays later, Laiatu Latu sacked Colorado’s Owen McCown for an 11-yard loss which effectively ended the drive. The Bruins forced a punt three plays later.
UCLA’s second drive started from their own five. DTR completed five consecutive passes for 60 yards to move to the Buffs’ 35. With 46 seconds left in the first quarter, Zach Charbonnet broke a 35-yard run for his first touchdown of the game and the Bruins were up 14-0 after the first quarter.
Colorado showed an ability to move down the field on the UCLA defense again, moving all the way down to the Bruin 13. On 2nd and goal, the Bruins stopped Anthony Hankerson for a one yard loss and Gabriel Murphy forced a fourth and goal with a sack of McCown. Becker didn’t miss this time, making a 35-yard field goal.
UCLA moved down the field pretty quickly again, alternating passes with runs by DTR. With the ball on the Colorado 8-yard line, Charbonnet was dropped for a five-yard loss, but he gained that back on the next play and then some as he broke a 13-yarder for his second touchdown.
The Buffs scored their first touchdown on their last drive of the first half when McCown called his own number on fourth and goal from the two.
UCLA got the ball to start the second half and promptly moved 29 yards on three passes from Thompson-Robinson. On the fourth play of the drive, Charbonnet broke a 46-yard run for his third and final touchdown of the game, giving the Bruins a 28-10 lead.
That pretty much wrapped up the day for Charbonnet who only ran the ball two more times after that.
The Bruins wrapped up the third quarter by adding a 44-yard field goal by Nicholas Barr-Mira and a 2-yard touchdown pass from DTR to Colson Yankoff to give UCLA a 38-10 lead after three quarters. After that touchdown pass, Thompson-Robinson was also done for the day.
UCLA’s final touchdown came on the first play of the fourth quarter on a three-yard pass from Ethan Garbers to Yankoff.
The Buffaloes added a fourth quarter touchdown on an 85-yard drive that took up over six minutes, but it was too little, too late and the Bruins took this one, 45-17.
UCLA will host the Washington Huskies at the Rose Bowl on Friday night at 7:30 pm PT and it should be the Bruins’ toughest game of the season so far.
Go Bruins!!!
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Colorado might well be the worst D-1 program in the country right now - yes, even worse than Jim Mora Jr.’s UConn Huskies - so perhaps the Bruins erratic performances (including today) are simply a case of playing down to an inferior opponent. Unfortunately, after four games a team should be coalescing into who and what they really are, and this UCLA team appears to have some significant weaknesses that should be easily exploited by better opponents. On offense, the O line play is inconsistent, no deep threats have emerged and DTR still provides some signature WTF moments. But the real issue will be on defense - poor tackling, silly penalties, nobody to anchor the interior line, and some of the most inept secondary play imaginable….aside from the huge cushions, they appear to have no idea whatsoever of coverage techniques or how to play the ball. Today, in addition to some big Colorado plays down the fields, there were other instances where the Buff QB simply missed wide open receivers or receivers dropped catchable balls - not a repeatable strategy against most of the remaining opponents. Hope I’m wrong, but feels like there’s some ugly games in the near future…even teams like Arizona and Cal will likely have their way with this team, much less the powerful offenses of Oregon, Utah and SC.
Whatever else you can say, at least we’re not WSU fans…