UCLA Football Preview: Bruins Can Ruin the Trojans' Season Tonight

A UCLA win could help Lincoln Riley accomplish something it took Clay Helton four seasons to do.

Redshirt sophomore Jayden Maiava will be starting his second game of the year at quarterback for Southern Cal. (Photo Credit: John McGillen/usctrojans.com)

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It hasn’t exactly been a great season for Southern Cal head coach Lincoln Riley. In fact, after being hired with the reputation he had coming from Oklahoma as the replacement for the legendary Bob Stoops, Riley’s tenure has now become officially disappointing to Trojan fans.

His overall coaching record with the Trojans now sits at three fewer wins than Clay Helton had over 37 games. Helton’s record was 27-10 while Riley’s is 24-13.

So, Trojan fans may very well start questioning what they are getting from Riley, especially if the Bruins beat him and the Trojans again this evening.

After last season, Riley had to hire a new defensive coordinator. So, he poached D’Anton Lynn from UCLA after Lynn orchestrated a remarkable turnaround for the Bruin defense. But the reality is that the Trojans’ defense just hasn’t improved this year the way the Bruins’ defense improved last year compared to 2022. That doesn’t mean imply that Lynn’s job may be in jeopardy. That doesn’t seem likely, but he clearly hasn’t delivered results like he seemed to deliver last year in Westwood.

Meanwhile, offensive coordinator Josh Henson is in his third season as the Trojans’ offensive coordinator, even if he may still be the offensive coordinator in name only with Riley being the so-called “offensive genius.” It should come as no surprise that the Trojans like to throw the ball—a lot. In fact, Southern Cal has thrown the ball 59.6% of the time this season. That could spell trouble for a Bruin defense which is ranked 103rd in the country in passing yards allowed. While UCLA has allowed an average of 245.7 passing yards per game, Southern Cal is averaging 288.0 passing yards per game.

The bottom line is that it’s been an up-and-down season for Southern Cal. To be sure, the Trojans could still replicate last season’s 8-5 mark if they win tonight, win again next week and win a bowl game, but with Notre Dame sitting at 9-1, it seems highly unlikely that Southern Cal will beat the Irish. Of course, that means that UCLA has an opportunity tonight to (B)ruin the Trojans’ season by winning tonight’s game and helping keep their crosstown rivals home during Bowl Season.

Special Teams

With former Trojan head coach Clay Helton now in the same role at Georgia Southern, you might consider Southern Cal kicker Michael Lantz as the infamous “player to be named later” that Georgia Southern sent to the Trojans in return for the team’s former head coach because Lantz transferred to Southern Cal this year after spending the past two seasons with the Eagles.

Lantz is just 10 for 16 this season on field goal attempts. So, he’s been pretty mediocre. In fact, the only distance where he has been good this season has been from 30-39 yards where he’s two-for-two. He’s just four-for-six from 20-29 yards, three-for-six from 40-49 yards and one-for-two from 50 yards or more. If the Bruin defense can stop the Trojan offense from getting into the end zone, I like the chances that Lantz misses at least one field goal tonight. In fact, Lantz hasn’t made a field goal in over a month. His last field goal came when the Trojans played Penn State on October 12th.

He will also kickoff for Southern Cal. While his average is just 64.1 yards, 41 of his 58 kickoffs have gone for touchbacks. So, expect UCLA to start from the 25 tonight after most kickoffs.

Senior Eddie Czaplicki is back for another season as Southern Cal’s punter. He’s done a good job for the Trojans this year, punting 33 times with 18 going for more than 50 yards and 19 punts landing inside the 20. He averages 48.9 yards per punt with a long of 62 yards.

It’s been a rough year for the Trojans’ Zacariah Branch. Last season, he returned both a punt and a kickoff for a touchdown and he averaged 20.6 yards per punt return entering the UCLA game. This year, he’s averaging just 5.73 yards per punt return and his longest has just been 20 yards. To be sure, he’s still a dangerous return man, but he hasn’t put up the numbers like he did last season.

By comparison, Branch has only returned five kickoffs this year, compared to 22 entering the UCLA game last year. His longest kickoff return was just 46 yards, unlike last season when he returned a 96-yarder for a touchdown.

Makai Lemon has actually returned almost twice as many kickoffs as Branch has. Perhaps that has to do with teams kicking to Lemon instead of Branch, but regardless of why, it’s resulted in Lemon returning nine kickoffs with an average of 29.22 yards per return including his longest return for 80 yards.

Offense

Even though Southern Cal’s offense relies on passing almost 60% of the time, it doesn’t mean that all is well offensively for the Trojans. Miller Moss, who became the team’s starting quarterback when Caleb Williams declined to play in the Holiday Bowl last season, has been benched in favor of UNLV transfer Jayden Maiava.

It would seem that Riley will likely stick with the redshirt sophomore who led the Trojans to a 28-20 win last week over the Nebraska Cornhuskers rather than switch back to Moss, who was the starting quarterback during a stretch where Southern Cal had lost four of five games.

Despite the change, it didn’t seem to change the Trojans’ offensive tendencies much. Last week against the Huskers, Maiava had 35 pass attempts while the team ran the ball just 25 times. That’s a pass-run mix of 58.3% in favor of pass plays. So, the change in quarterback hasn’t resulted in a change of what the Trojans are trying to do.

Quarterback

At the same time, Maiava gives the team a more mobile option at the position. Maiava has run the ball eight times for 47 net yards while Moss has had 21 carries for a net loss of 18 yards.

Maiava played well enough last week, completing 25 of 35 passes for 259 yards with three touchdowns to just one interception.

Passing Game

With the Trojans putting such an emphasis on throwing the ball, the fact that Maiava has only started one game makes it tougher to know what his tendencies are as far as who his favorite receivers tend to be.

Last week, Maiava spread the ball around quite a bit. He found Zacariah Branch and Woody Marks six times each with Branch gaining 41 yards and a touchdown while Marks had gained 36 yards coming out of the backfield.

But, clearly, the most dangerous guy was Duce Robinson who had four catches against Nebraska for 90 yards and a touchdown. Kyron Hudson added three catches for 35 yards and a touchdown. Former Trojan-turned-Bruin-turned-Trojan again Kyle Ford also had a pair of catches for 28 yards last week.

One guy who didn’t factor in much last week was Trojan tight end Lake McRee, who had just one reception for nine yards.

Running Game

Redshirt senior Woody Marks has been the Trojans’ primary running back all season. He’s carried 174 times for 1,024 net yards, averaging 5.9 yards per carry with nine touchdowns on the ground. He is the guy who carries the ball more than 60% of the time when Southern Cal runs the ball. That makes him the guy the Bruins have to stop when their rivals try to pound the rock.

At the same time, redshirt freshman Quinten Joyner looks to be Southern Cal’s running back of the future. He is actually averaging 7.6 yards per carry this year, but he’s only carried 49 times this season with three touchdowns. His 75-yard carry against Utah State is the longest rush by a Trojan this season. So, the Bruins have to be prepared to stop both Trojan running backs.

Last week, Maiava was the only other Trojan to run the ball besides Marks and Joyner. He ran five times for 20 net yards and a touchdown. The Bruins will need to contain the Trojan quarterback and get pressure on the sophomore overall.

Defense

When your defensive coordinator bails to go coach at your crosstown rival, you should know at least a little something about his defensive tendencies. That should give the Bruin offense some sort of an edge today, even though offensive coordinator Eric Bienemy wasn’t in Westwood last season. But head coach DeShaun Foster and tight ends coach Jerry Neuheisel were here last year. So, I expect the two of them have played key roles in the development of the offensive game plan this week.

The fact of the matter is that the Trojans’ rush defense is nowhere near as good as the Bruin rush defense. Southern Cal is ranked just 50th in the country against the run this year. That should help open up the running game for UCLA tonight.

I also expect the Bruins to attack their rivals with a lot of short passes like they have done so effectively in the second half of the season.

Look for Lynn’s defense to feature a 4-2-5 nickel defense as the team’s base defense.

Let’s look at Southern Cal’s defensive personnel.

Defensive Line

Given the fact that the Trojans’ defensive line features three redshirt seniors, you might think they would be better against the run than they have been, but they haven’t been.

The fact that defensive tackle Gavin Mayer leads the defensive line in tackles with 23 including two TFLs and one sack but is only seventh on the team in tackles says a lot about the Trojan defense. The redshirt senior also has three pass breakups, two QB hurries and a blocked kick.

The other starting defensive tackle is redshirt senior Nate Clifton. He’s made just 15 tackles this year with one TFL to go with two pass breakups and a fumble recovery.

The third redshirt senior is defensive end Jamil Muhammad. Muhammad has made 16 tackles with half a TFL and no sacks. The other defensive end is Braylan Shelby. The sophomore has 19 tackles including three TFLs and just one sack. He also has a breakup and a QB hurry.

Linebackers

While Mike linebacker Easton Mascarenas-Arnold leads the Trojans with 82 tackles, only four of them have been TFLs and two of them were sacks. That would seem to indicate that opposing offenses are gaining ground yardage easily against the Trojans. The senior also has two interceptions and two QB hurries.

Redshirt senior Mason Cobb will get the start at Will linebacker. He’s the team’s second-leading tackler with 61 tackles. Yet, again, he doesn’t penetrate opposing backfields. He only has 2.5 TFLs and no sacks. He has added two interceptions, three breakups and a QB hurry.

Secondary

When Lynn moved across town, he took two Bruin defenders with him. Starting safety Kamari Ramsey followed him to South Central, and it’s a good thing for Lynn that he did. Ramsey has made 43 tackles this season including a team-leading 5.5 TFLs and he’s tied with Mascarenas-Arnold for the lead in sacks with two. He’s also broken up five passes, had a QB hurry and forced two fumbles. Without a doubt, he will be bringing it today. Let’s hope the Bruins go after him as well.

The other starting safety will be senior Akili Arnold. Arnold’s 41 tackles are almost as many as Ramsey, but he’s only had half a TFL and half a sack. He’s also broken up a pass and had a QB hurry.

Greedy Vance, Jr. may just have the best name for a defensive back in college football. Of course, when you have a name like that, you have to live up to it. The redshirt senior transfer who’s at his third college, after starting at Louisville and moving to Florida State, hasn’t done that. He’s only got one interception this season. So, he hasn’t really been greedy. What he has done, however, is made 21 tackles including one TFL and added two breakups. Vance is the Trojans’ nickel back.

Jacobe Covington will start at one of the corner spots. The redshirt senior is in his third season with Southern Cal after transferring from Washington. He’s made 20 tackles with one TFL as well as two breakups. The other Bruin defender who followed Lynn across town was John Humphrey. He will backup Covington at this corner. He’s made 16 tackles with three breakups.

Senior Jaylin Smith will be the other starting corner. He’s third on the team in tackles with 48 including three TFLs. He’s tied with both of the starting linebackers for the team lead in interceptions with two. He also has two pass breakups.

Analysis

It seems obvious, but it’s worth mentioning that D’Anton Lynn may have been the benefactor of walking into a situation where the Bruins had amassed some defensive talent prior to last season. Darius Muasau and Laiatu Latu clearly made Lynn look like a miracle worker after UCLA had struggled defensively for a long time under Chip Kelly.

He just doesn’t seem to have the same level of talent on his current defense across town. That’s the good news.

Some more good news for the Bruins is the fact that three Trojans are tied for the team lead in sacks with just two each. One is Ramsey, a safety. The second is linebacker Eric Gentry who is redshirting this year after suffering a series of concussions. The third is Mascarenas-Arnold, the middle linebacker. Neither of Southern Cal’s defensive ends are included there. Frankly, when your two defensive ends combine for only one sack, it’s not a good thing.

That seems to imply that the Trojans don’t have the best pass rush, especially when one of the three guys leading the team in sacks played only four of the team’s ten games.

So, it seems that Ethan Garbers should have plenty of time to find receivers tonight, but that may not be such a great thing, considering that Garbers has the team’s two longest runs of the season.

Look for UCLA to pressure Maiava who will start just his second game of the season, but if they do, they will need to contain him because he can hurt UCLA with his legs if they don’t. At the same time, getting pressure on him may be the most effective way for the Bruins to disrupt the Southern Cal passing game.

The fact is that a Bruin win tonight is likely to ruin Southern Cal’s season and send Lincoln Riley to a losing record this season in his third season with the team. That’s something it took even Clay Helton four seasons to accomplish at Figueroa Tech. Could a UCLA win tonight lead to Riley’s departure from the Trojans? Probably not, but who knows?


Go Bruins!!! Beat $c!!!

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