1. Agree, but this coaching staff can't and won't figure it out. He should have started last night
2. I was there it didn't seem there were that many there, but it did feel like a Minnesota home game!
3. YES
4. More like the probable new Mountain West conference where you may have teams like UC Davis to compete with instead of teams like Boise St. UCLA would never get past Boise St. or even Washington St and Oregon St for that matter.
We are at the bottom of a deep hole.I remember when we were competitive and the PAC was as well. Well, mostly $UC. But the Rose Ball Game meant something,it was big bucks to the conference. Then the NCAA decided to trend towards the mean.
I think that if Martin started yesterday, we would have won. Martin, in his first ever start and playing against a top 10 team, played his heart out and managed the game well, with crisp looking passes. Imagine what he could’ve done with a week taking first team reps.
Martin is also a better scrambler than Garbers and he can’t possibly be worse at throwing out routes that Garbers missed multiple times yesterday, one of which resulted in an INT. Martin is also quicker at going to his check downs, while Garbers stared down his receivers all night.
I agree - while "good Garbers" ran the opening drive script well and hit the long pass to J.Mike to take the lead, we can't afford "bad Garbers" who misses an open receiver in the front corner of the end zone, forcing us to settle for 3, and the two killer picks (I don't really count the hail Mary).
I agree the poise Martin showed in front of 110,000 on the road vs a top 5 team bodes well... that said, I also hope Madden Iamaleava enrolls early now that CIF decided he's ineligible...
Attendance figures are juiced up by all the teeny-bopper cheer squads from the local schools and usually include paid, but no-show season ticket holders. My section was nearly empty - and has been for most of the season. I shudder to think what it will look like when Iowa comes to town if we lose our next two road games.
I am surprised a certain individual, an ardent Kelly apologist, has not been commenting, not even a word. But I am darn sure he is covertly pleased we got what we deserve. Even if worse is yet to come with six weeks remaining, to me, this is a painful learning season for Foster and his team. Time will tell if he is the right fit for UCLA. But our AD is to the one to blame for everything. He is unqualified, unskilled for prime time. Too bad UCLA has to endure a sequel to Dan Guerrero.
Ole Chipster Alfraud had a horrible first season at UCLA. In fact, he was a horrible coach and person. Yet invariably no one called for his firing as most were in awe of CA and gave him the proverbial pass.
Foster was indeed put in a terrible position due to Jarmond Jelly (aka Donut 2.0) and his inexcusable handling of CA. Jelly lacks integrity and is totally unqualified to be AD.
With that said, Foster will be much better next year, if he continues to be great on the HS recruiting trail. Because Foster loves UCLA so much and is a dedicated and intelligent person, he will learn from his mistakes, seek wisdom from others and develop into a good if not great coach down the road.
I am not sure any coach could produce a great record this season given the dumpster fire left by CA and the weakness of Jelly.
I initially had much higher hopes for this season, but realized we were left with not much and Foster had to scramble to fill the holes. I say give Foster time as he deserves our support, imho.
Speaking of recruiting, given the number for 2025 to date, it looks like a good effort is being made, but check out the ESPN 300. Of course, the cross-town brats have their fair share, but Oregon is scary. Two for the Bruins including a QB at LB Poly.
Oregon is such a strange school. Remember when they were the proverbial basement dwellers with Oregon State? Knight's cash lifted them to the moon.
Have you have ever been on their campus, it's so obvious that athletics are King with beyond State of the Art facilities while their campus remains as ugly as their uniforms and as lacking as their college town of Eugene. It's just a weird weird place.
Almost went to play there in 68. Eugene was a funky little town and the athletic facilities were agricultural! Two beautiful days of sun in May. Went to a pizza place with my Mom and was told by some students that it usually rains from October to June. Rain? Uh, I grew up on the beach in So Cal. Imagine a lot has changed since then, especially the facilities!
It is always raining. Eugene is not a clean town now - it's kinda a cesspool. My son spent his first year of HS at Marist Catholic HS in Eugene - which is an excellent school but we moved back to my home State of Utah when Oregon as a whole was rapidly deteriorating. I know many diehard Ducks and they don't care about academics, only Football and Basketball as a somewhat distant cousin.
They will continue to recruit well as they have so much money and Football is cult-like with their uniform and brand. UCLA will likely never reach that level of success unless we have a complete cultural overhaul and Frenk is not the guy to do it.
I do not understand why we continue to have bad ADs and Chancellors - the committees making these decisions really must love to see us tank in Football and only care about their glam galas and posh fundraisers for 'health' care.
LOL !!!! Weird place you say ??? I agree 100%. When you have the chance, go check out Madison, Wisconsin. Town & Country magazine ranks it perennially among the top five most livable places in US.
One year, Francis Ford Coppola was a guest speaker at a graduate seminar at the School of Communication Arts. He shook all of our hands and to a person, he said he would come back and come back again. Just staying overnight to give a speech was not enough, quote unquote.
I never believed then and I still don't that he was faking it to please us kids.
This is what happens when you hire a transition coach. If you are going to do that, might as well just stick the interim tag on him so you aren't committed for more than 1 season.
Time management could have been better but it was the penalties at crucial points of the game that assisted Minnesota in two scores. 105 yards given up versus 21 for Minnesota is a tough mountain to climb. Some of the penalties were hard to justify in my view but it is what it is.
I doubt starting Martin would have made a difference but starting Martin would be looking towards the future while Garbers will be gone next year and this year is a throw away year.
I agree there was no excuse for the penalties especially in view of DRE. I think Martin needs to start. What do we have to lose 🙃 Martin has good instincts. Garbers does not. Martin has a better arm and mobility and Garbers is slow and lacks mobility. Garbers is a great person but not qualified to run the offense, especially with the OL deficits and the need for a quick release of the ball.
This game was lost because of coaching, turnovers, and penalties. Otherwise our guys outplayed Min. in the other categories. I would only count two interceptions. The last one was on a hail Mary, not because of a bad decision or throw.
We need a new OC - EB is not close to what we need. If we had a truly great OC who was an outstanding leader and developer, he could help Foster grow.
I would also say, we need to replace the DC - Maloy is not great and we do have talent on D, but need an outstanding coach. Wonder how D Lynn is feeling at suc with an unimpressive 3-3 record. When you follow the $, it often doesn't turn out well.
you get what you pay for. Ikaika Malloe is the most we could afford. We lost a great DC because we could not afford to pay him another million. Only paying Bieniemy $550k a year too....but he's definitely not the problem.
I absolutely disagree with this. Our run defense is actually decent and being hurt by a non existent pash rush which is a talent issue. USC isn’t doing any better (slightly worse in fact) despite playing weaker opponents (our opponents outside Hawaii are a combined 2 losses). We also just held Minnesota to near their lowest output for the season
There are many faults with this team; Malloe is not one of them.
I respect your opinion. I haven't seen the D put together a complete game - and talent is a factor. I just don't think Malloe is an outstanding coach but perhaps he will become one. The D penalties were killing us but that can be cleaned up. As I said in the game thread, I really like the spirit of this team as they are playing hard.
also a significant deficit in talent. It's not Garbers fault that he's not an NFL talent, and it's not Harden's fault that we have no o-line. A talented team with poor coaching can at least win some games (see eg Kelly, Chip). But it's really hard for good coaching to make up for a lack of talent.
DeShaun is a great person and was a fantastic player, but those traits don't transfer to success from the coaching ranks, we've ALL seen it time and again. To not get Martin in there when Garbers was throwing the ball everywhere except where it needed to go, speaks volumes about this staff. If Foster and co. suffer a similar embarrassment against the Scarlet Knights - and if W/L records still mean anything, they will - they should fire the coach. At least Bienemy shows passion. I'll never completely understand what - just exactly - has happened to this, and the once storied Track & Field Program.
I really wanted to wait to try to have some perspective before sharing my thoughts... but the more I think about it the sadder I am...
Foster was put in an impossible situation by Chip's decision to bail when he did and Jarmon's decision not to fire Chip after the Cal game - tho that might not have been in his hands if Block mandated no major moves until a new Chancellor was hired.
That said, one way of measuring a coach is 'are the players still playing hard for him?' In Foster's case, yes, clearly (note as well no one bailed after 4 games to preserve a year of eligibility as has happened elsewhere) unlike last year's team that quit in the cal-berkeley game.
However - at this point, another measurement beyond effort is 'are the coaches putting players in the best position to win?' Clearly the answer is "Not nearly consistently enough." and the clock management is unforgivable... not only the end of the first half as Joe pointed out, but the end game... once Minnesota got a 1st and Goal it's Football 101 to call a timeout after every non-incomplete pass to preserve as much time as possible to either try to drive for the needed TD (if they get one) or take a shot to break the tie (if they kick the FG to tie).
I was cautiously optimistic going into last night after what I saw live the last 4 games (fortunate enough to travel to Baton Rouge and State College) with Minnesota having to travel and let down after their big win vs just $c and finally playing a non-top 10 team... after last night - I don't see how we don't go 1-11.🤬
can't believe they gave him a multi year deal when he's a transitional coach. Should have treated it as a mid season departure and given him the interim tag.
But doing that would destroy recruiting - who would commit under those circumstances whether HS or transfer? Not to mention dampening the enthusiasm which helped increase the contributions to the Collective that occurred after Foster was named...
Whatever buyout ends up being paid - and I hope there isn't one but hope isn't a strategy- is really the final part of the sunk cost of Chip's bailing and Jarmond's lack of action last December whether it was his lack of decision or Block's.
Recruiting does not matter as much anymore. If you can pay the players they come, if you can't they don't. And recruiting cannot be much worse than it is now. My point was more along the lines of if this was always gong to be a throwaway season, don't commit 5 years and millions of dollars to a coach with no experience. Make the best of this season, and then throw $8 million at the best coach on the market in December 2024. That option is now off the table. Foster will be our coach next year. And yes Foster has a buyout.
You do make a good point about increasing contributions to the collective, but did Foster really help that? I know dozens of people who make small contributions to the collective and would do so even if Karl Dorrell came back. They just want to contribute to UCLA football.
I have said it from the start, this is a really bad coaching staff. There were so many poor decisions through out the game. The one which really irked me was 90 or so yards of penalties. No excuse.
The only good part about this season is that USC is not very good, so we will at least have a reasonable chance at home in the anything can happen rivalry game.
Takeaways:
1. Justyn Martin should get the start at Rutgers on Saturday.
2. I was blown away that we had something like 43K in attendance. Probably 10K were Golden Gophers.
3. Nice that the start was earlier.
4. The bruins belong back in the PAC 12.
1. Agree, but this coaching staff can't and won't figure it out. He should have started last night
2. I was there it didn't seem there were that many there, but it did feel like a Minnesota home game!
3. YES
4. More like the probable new Mountain West conference where you may have teams like UC Davis to compete with instead of teams like Boise St. UCLA would never get past Boise St. or even Washington St and Oregon St for that matter.
We are at the bottom of a deep hole.I remember when we were competitive and the PAC was as well. Well, mostly $UC. But the Rose Ball Game meant something,it was big bucks to the conference. Then the NCAA decided to trend towards the mean.
I think that if Martin started yesterday, we would have won. Martin, in his first ever start and playing against a top 10 team, played his heart out and managed the game well, with crisp looking passes. Imagine what he could’ve done with a week taking first team reps.
Martin is also a better scrambler than Garbers and he can’t possibly be worse at throwing out routes that Garbers missed multiple times yesterday, one of which resulted in an INT. Martin is also quicker at going to his check downs, while Garbers stared down his receivers all night.
I agree - while "good Garbers" ran the opening drive script well and hit the long pass to J.Mike to take the lead, we can't afford "bad Garbers" who misses an open receiver in the front corner of the end zone, forcing us to settle for 3, and the two killer picks (I don't really count the hail Mary).
I agree the poise Martin showed in front of 110,000 on the road vs a top 5 team bodes well... that said, I also hope Madden Iamaleava enrolls early now that CIF decided he's ineligible...
Attendance figures are juiced up by all the teeny-bopper cheer squads from the local schools and usually include paid, but no-show season ticket holders. My section was nearly empty - and has been for most of the season. I shudder to think what it will look like when Iowa comes to town if we lose our next two road games.
#4 YES!
Foster has been bad!
I am surprised a certain individual, an ardent Kelly apologist, has not been commenting, not even a word. But I am darn sure he is covertly pleased we got what we deserve. Even if worse is yet to come with six weeks remaining, to me, this is a painful learning season for Foster and his team. Time will tell if he is the right fit for UCLA. But our AD is to the one to blame for everything. He is unqualified, unskilled for prime time. Too bad UCLA has to endure a sequel to Dan Guerrero.
Ole Chipster Alfraud had a horrible first season at UCLA. In fact, he was a horrible coach and person. Yet invariably no one called for his firing as most were in awe of CA and gave him the proverbial pass.
Foster was indeed put in a terrible position due to Jarmond Jelly (aka Donut 2.0) and his inexcusable handling of CA. Jelly lacks integrity and is totally unqualified to be AD.
With that said, Foster will be much better next year, if he continues to be great on the HS recruiting trail. Because Foster loves UCLA so much and is a dedicated and intelligent person, he will learn from his mistakes, seek wisdom from others and develop into a good if not great coach down the road.
I am not sure any coach could produce a great record this season given the dumpster fire left by CA and the weakness of Jelly.
I initially had much higher hopes for this season, but realized we were left with not much and Foster had to scramble to fill the holes. I say give Foster time as he deserves our support, imho.
Need to add, that I think EB needs to go.
Speaking of recruiting, given the number for 2025 to date, it looks like a good effort is being made, but check out the ESPN 300. Of course, the cross-town brats have their fair share, but Oregon is scary. Two for the Bruins including a QB at LB Poly.
Oregon is such a strange school. Remember when they were the proverbial basement dwellers with Oregon State? Knight's cash lifted them to the moon.
Have you have ever been on their campus, it's so obvious that athletics are King with beyond State of the Art facilities while their campus remains as ugly as their uniforms and as lacking as their college town of Eugene. It's just a weird weird place.
Almost went to play there in 68. Eugene was a funky little town and the athletic facilities were agricultural! Two beautiful days of sun in May. Went to a pizza place with my Mom and was told by some students that it usually rains from October to June. Rain? Uh, I grew up on the beach in So Cal. Imagine a lot has changed since then, especially the facilities!
It is always raining. Eugene is not a clean town now - it's kinda a cesspool. My son spent his first year of HS at Marist Catholic HS in Eugene - which is an excellent school but we moved back to my home State of Utah when Oregon as a whole was rapidly deteriorating. I know many diehard Ducks and they don't care about academics, only Football and Basketball as a somewhat distant cousin.
They will continue to recruit well as they have so much money and Football is cult-like with their uniform and brand. UCLA will likely never reach that level of success unless we have a complete cultural overhaul and Frenk is not the guy to do it.
I do not understand why we continue to have bad ADs and Chancellors - the committees making these decisions really must love to see us tank in Football and only care about their glam galas and posh fundraisers for 'health' care.
LOL !!!! Weird place you say ??? I agree 100%. When you have the chance, go check out Madison, Wisconsin. Town & Country magazine ranks it perennially among the top five most livable places in US.
One year, Francis Ford Coppola was a guest speaker at a graduate seminar at the School of Communication Arts. He shook all of our hands and to a person, he said he would come back and come back again. Just staying overnight to give a speech was not enough, quote unquote.
I never believed then and I still don't that he was faking it to please us kids.
hate to say it, but we were in better shape with Chip Kelly.
You really don't hate to say it.
Chip was bad, but this is like basically not having a coach. And there's no end in sight.
We got him out of his foxhole, LOL !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I hope he migrates to his the Columbus habitat to be closer to Chip Kelly.
Oops, forgot to delete " the ".
This is what happens when you hire a transition coach. If you are going to do that, might as well just stick the interim tag on him so you aren't committed for more than 1 season.
Time management could have been better but it was the penalties at crucial points of the game that assisted Minnesota in two scores. 105 yards given up versus 21 for Minnesota is a tough mountain to climb. Some of the penalties were hard to justify in my view but it is what it is.
I doubt starting Martin would have made a difference but starting Martin would be looking towards the future while Garbers will be gone next year and this year is a throw away year.
I agree there was no excuse for the penalties especially in view of DRE. I think Martin needs to start. What do we have to lose 🙃 Martin has good instincts. Garbers does not. Martin has a better arm and mobility and Garbers is slow and lacks mobility. Garbers is a great person but not qualified to run the offense, especially with the OL deficits and the need for a quick release of the ball.
"What do we have to lose."
Given the OL, JM most certainly would be injured, and we'd lose him for the entire season next year.
Garbers, unfortunately for him and for the Bruins, is a sacrificial lamb.
As DD says, it's the process over time rather than the number of wins this year, painful as it is.
All good points, Sea.
This game was lost because of coaching, turnovers, and penalties. Otherwise our guys outplayed Min. in the other categories. I would only count two interceptions. The last one was on a hail Mary, not because of a bad decision or throw.
Yes, it's definitely the coaching.Other teams seem to figure out our game plan and adapt. We just do the same ol same ol.
We need a new OC - EB is not close to what we need. If we had a truly great OC who was an outstanding leader and developer, he could help Foster grow.
I would also say, we need to replace the DC - Maloy is not great and we do have talent on D, but need an outstanding coach. Wonder how D Lynn is feeling at suc with an unimpressive 3-3 record. When you follow the $, it often doesn't turn out well.
you get what you pay for. Ikaika Malloe is the most we could afford. We lost a great DC because we could not afford to pay him another million. Only paying Bieniemy $550k a year too....but he's definitely not the problem.
I absolutely disagree with this. Our run defense is actually decent and being hurt by a non existent pash rush which is a talent issue. USC isn’t doing any better (slightly worse in fact) despite playing weaker opponents (our opponents outside Hawaii are a combined 2 losses). We also just held Minnesota to near their lowest output for the season
There are many faults with this team; Malloe is not one of them.
I respect your opinion. I haven't seen the D put together a complete game - and talent is a factor. I just don't think Malloe is an outstanding coach but perhaps he will become one. The D penalties were killing us but that can be cleaned up. As I said in the game thread, I really like the spirit of this team as they are playing hard.
also a significant deficit in talent. It's not Garbers fault that he's not an NFL talent, and it's not Harden's fault that we have no o-line. A talented team with poor coaching can at least win some games (see eg Kelly, Chip). But it's really hard for good coaching to make up for a lack of talent.
I agree that Chip would have us passable on offense but I doubt we’re better than 2-4 this year. 3-3 if we’re extremely lucky.
The only benefit of keeping Chip would have been to fire him in November and begin a proper coaching search then
better than 1-5!!!
DeShaun is a great person and was a fantastic player, but those traits don't transfer to success from the coaching ranks, we've ALL seen it time and again. To not get Martin in there when Garbers was throwing the ball everywhere except where it needed to go, speaks volumes about this staff. If Foster and co. suffer a similar embarrassment against the Scarlet Knights - and if W/L records still mean anything, they will - they should fire the coach. At least Bienemy shows passion. I'll never completely understand what - just exactly - has happened to this, and the once storied Track & Field Program.
but he's a UCLA alum, so that should count just as much as coaching experience during the hiring process.
Ouch! True.
Well, at least the Bruins' offense matched their highest point total of the season (17).
Now I'm wondering why they hired their current OC in the first place:
https://awfulannouncing.com/nfl/stephen-a-smith-done-defending-eric-bieniemy.html
I really wanted to wait to try to have some perspective before sharing my thoughts... but the more I think about it the sadder I am...
Foster was put in an impossible situation by Chip's decision to bail when he did and Jarmon's decision not to fire Chip after the Cal game - tho that might not have been in his hands if Block mandated no major moves until a new Chancellor was hired.
That said, one way of measuring a coach is 'are the players still playing hard for him?' In Foster's case, yes, clearly (note as well no one bailed after 4 games to preserve a year of eligibility as has happened elsewhere) unlike last year's team that quit in the cal-berkeley game.
However - at this point, another measurement beyond effort is 'are the coaches putting players in the best position to win?' Clearly the answer is "Not nearly consistently enough." and the clock management is unforgivable... not only the end of the first half as Joe pointed out, but the end game... once Minnesota got a 1st and Goal it's Football 101 to call a timeout after every non-incomplete pass to preserve as much time as possible to either try to drive for the needed TD (if they get one) or take a shot to break the tie (if they kick the FG to tie).
I was cautiously optimistic going into last night after what I saw live the last 4 games (fortunate enough to travel to Baton Rouge and State College) with Minnesota having to travel and let down after their big win vs just $c and finally playing a non-top 10 team... after last night - I don't see how we don't go 1-11.🤬
Sorry for the TL:DR post 😀 Go Bruins
can't believe they gave him a multi year deal when he's a transitional coach. Should have treated it as a mid season departure and given him the interim tag.
But doing that would destroy recruiting - who would commit under those circumstances whether HS or transfer? Not to mention dampening the enthusiasm which helped increase the contributions to the Collective that occurred after Foster was named...
Whatever buyout ends up being paid - and I hope there isn't one but hope isn't a strategy- is really the final part of the sunk cost of Chip's bailing and Jarmond's lack of action last December whether it was his lack of decision or Block's.
Recruiting does not matter as much anymore. If you can pay the players they come, if you can't they don't. And recruiting cannot be much worse than it is now. My point was more along the lines of if this was always gong to be a throwaway season, don't commit 5 years and millions of dollars to a coach with no experience. Make the best of this season, and then throw $8 million at the best coach on the market in December 2024. That option is now off the table. Foster will be our coach next year. And yes Foster has a buyout.
You do make a good point about increasing contributions to the collective, but did Foster really help that? I know dozens of people who make small contributions to the collective and would do so even if Karl Dorrell came back. They just want to contribute to UCLA football.
Chip should have been fired after the ASU debacle.
I have said it from the start, this is a really bad coaching staff. There were so many poor decisions through out the game. The one which really irked me was 90 or so yards of penalties. No excuse.
The only good part about this season is that USC is not very good, so we will at least have a reasonable chance at home in the anything can happen rivalry game.