Spaulding Report: UCLA Football Week Eight Interviews
Spaulding Report: UCLA Football Week Eight Interviews
As you wait for today's game to kickoff, we've gathered all of this week's UCLA Football interviews for you in one place.
Let’s take a quick peek at what’s been getting said at this week’s UCLA football press conferences. I’m just going to share these here all in the same place to make it easy for our readers to watch them if you haven’t already. The videos in this article are courtesy of UCLA Athletics on YouTube unless noted otherwise.
At his Monday press conference, Chip Kelly reflected on last week’s win over Stanford as well as the decision to start Ethan Garbers. He doubled down on his postgame comments about the decision being one based on the fact that Garbers was healthy at the beginning of the week and that Moore was “a little banged up” to start the week. Unsurprisingly, when asked who would start at quarterback this week, Kelly responded by saying:
I'll answer the question for the 10,000th time for you, Ben, as we make our decision at the end of the week so I had couldn’t tell you who's going to be up or down by the end of the week, and when we get to the end of the week, we’ll sit down as a staff and we'll go through it.
Kelly was also complimentary to the job Deion Sanders has done so far at Colorado. Kelly said:
They were one and eleven last year and they've won four games this year. So, it's working. He's done a great job there and we're going to have a battle on Saturday against him.
He added:
I think he's great. I think he's done an unbelievable job there. I think he's great for college football. I think the attention and the buzz that he's brought to this game [is great], but I also admire him. He's a little bit old school, in terms of his approach…in terms of how he does things and I think it's the same way he was when he was a player. He had he had a tremendous amount of talent, but he's got unbelievable work ethic in terms of what he does and how he performs and what he puts into it, and I think that's what he's asking from his players and that's what he's getting from his players. So it's really impressive what he's doing.
On Wednesday, Kelly covered a variety of topics. He starts off talking about Laiatu Latu and follows with some discussion about the size of the crowd that’s expected. He was also asked about sign stealing since it’s a hot topic due to the situation at Michigan, but he also discussed that his use of poster boards was to communicate faster. He explained:
If a play call is X words, can it be one picture? You know what I mean? So the concept of it is, if you go to McDonald's in order a number three that entails the sandwich or burger, the fries and the drink. You don't have to say the whole thing. That's where that came from. That didn't come from we thought people were stealing signals or sign or any of that stuff….We've just morphed and I think found other ways to communicate that we feel are a little bit more effective. I think there's an ebb and flow to everything. You may go back to them at some point in time, but we didn't use those signs as much as people thought we use those signs, but that wasn't the intention. I think sometimes there's the law of unintended consequences that you get this and then people think it's because of this and that can run with its own life of it. So, really, the genesis of that was how can we play faster and communicate this play call which could be West right slot 322 wh stick looke halfback burst? What's one picture so you can communicate that faster instead of West right slot 322 y stick lookie halfback burst? It could be that. That's how that part came. It wasn't because we were concerned with people stealing signals.
I think the answer to all of it very simply is: In the NFL, they call the play in from the head coach or the coordinator or the playcaller to the quarterback and they do the same thing defensively, and you don't have that issue in the NFL. I think we're a little bit in the Dark Ages here in college football and, if they went to headset communication, you wouldn't have any of these issues. So, we'll see where that goes. Hopefully that's in the future.
Moving to the players, Monday saw Kain Medrano, Hudson Habermehl and Duke Clemens meet with the media. Medrano started off talking about this week’s throwback uniforms.
I think it's sweet. Take it back to the old school. I like the the baby blue. I love the cleats that we're going to wear. So, it's going to be awesome going out there….I'm not sure about the helmet.
Habermehl also offered his thoughts on the throwbacks.
It's sweet. It's a nice little switch up. We're honoring the 54 championship team so I'm sure everyone will be excited to see it. We were all excited. I actually didn't know about it until last week and then had to try it on see how it fit. And, it was pretty cool pretty cool colors. So, we're all looking forward to it.
Meanwhile, Clemens spoke about the adjustments that come with the change in quarterbacks not being that big.
On Tuesday, wide receiver J. Michael Sturdivant and sophomore linebacker Carson Schwesinger were up. Sturdivant spoke about the Colorado defense along with Travis Hunter’s versatility while Schwesinger spoke about making an impact on special teams and drawing inspiration from former Bruin Matthew Slater.
That wraps up this week’s media interviews. UCLA hosts Coach Prime and the Colorado Buffaloes late this afternoon at 4:30 pm PT.
Go Bruins!!!
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