UCLA Football Preview: Bruins Could Gain an Edge With Special Teams
Plus, we look at Lincoln Riley and the new Southern Cal coaching staff.
It’s hard to believe that it’s Beat $c Week already. This season has just flown by. Except for this past Saturday’s game. That game was slow torture.
But the Bruins have started preparing for Southern Cal and it’s time for us to start previewing this week’s opponent, the hated Trojans.
As usual, let’s start off with a look at the Trojan coaching staff. Of course, Southern Cal AD spared no expense in bringing former Oklahoma head coach Lincoln Riley to Figueroa Tech. Of course, Riley is known for taking the Sooners to the College Football Playoff in each of his first three seasons. He’s also an innovative coach on the offensive side of the ball.
Riley brought much of his Oklahoma staff with him including defensive coordinator Alex Grinch. Grinch was brought to Oklahoma from Ohio State to help get the Sooners over the hump after they lost in the CFP semifinals during Riley’s first two seasons. While the Sooners made the College Football Playoff in Grinch’s first season, the result wasn’t any different. The Sooners were trounced by eventual champion LSU, 63-28. Grinch should be familiar to Bruin fans because he was Mike Leach’s defensive coordinator at Washington State from 2015 to 2017.
Much like Chip Kelly, Riley is the real offensive mind behind the Trojans, but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have an offensive coordinator. Like Kelly the past few seasons, Riley’s offensive coordinator is also the team’s offensive line coach. That falls to Josh Henson. Unlike much of the Southern Cal staff, Henson did not come from Oklahoma with Riley. Henson’s previous stop was at Texas A&M under Jimbo Fisher. Before A&M, he was coached the offensive line at Oklahoma State and Missouri. At Mizzou, he was also the team’s offensive coordinator.
One other Southern Cal coach to note is former UCLA outside linebackers coach Roy Manning. Manning left Westwood after just one season under Kelly to join Riley’s staff as the Sooners’ cornerbacks coach. At Southern Cal, Manning is back to coaching outside linebackers.
Special Teams
Special teams are an area which could turn the game in UCLA’s favor.
With Parker Lewis transferring to Ohio State, Southern Cal has a new placekicker this season. Redshirt freshman Denis Lynch is the Trojans’ new starting kicker, but he hasn’t really been great. While Lynch has been a perfect 54 for 54 on PATs, he’s made just 10 of 14 field goal attempts. Unlike some college kickers, Lynch seems to have the most issues between 30 and 39 yards. He’s just 3 for 6 in that range despite being 2 for 2 inside 30 yards and 5 for 5 from 40 to 49 yards. He’s also missed his only attempt of 50 yards or more. So, the Bruin defense can keep the Trojans out of the end zone when they are in the Red Zone, there’s a good likelihood that they won’t score at all.
Lynch does not, however, handle the kickoff duties. Instead, that falls redshirt senior Alex Stadthaus. He has handled all but two kickoffs for Southern Cal this season. He’s averaging 63.0 yards on 71 kickoffs and just 33 of them have gone for touchbacks. That could open the door to a big return for UCLA.
The Trojans’ punter is Australian junior Aadyn Sleep-Dalton. Dalton hasn’t had much work to do this season. He was called on just once in three of Southern Cal’s games and only twice in four more. In fact, he’s punted four or five times in just three of the Trojans’ ten games this season. His season-long punt came against Utah and went for 52 yards and that’s his only punt of more than 50 yards. Only 10 of his 25 punts have been fair catches and just six have landed inside the 20. That seems to indicate that teams have been returning kicks against Southern Cal and it’s another area where the Bruins could have an edge.
The Trojans have a tendency to return twice as many punts as their opponents, even though they are gaining an average of just 5.0 yards per return. Michael Jackson III is the team’s primary punt returner. He has returned 9 of their 15 punt returns and his long is just 13 yards. Meanwhile, Jordan Addison has four punt returns with a long of 15 and Gary Bryant, Jr. has returned the other two with a long of 5 yards. Overall, it looks like UCLA won’t have much difficulty bringing down the Southern Cal punt returners.
The same can’t be said for their kickoff returners. Two Trojans have kickoff returns of 40 yards or more. Freshman running back Raleek Brown has returned the overwhelming majority of kickoffs. He is averaging 23.85 yards per return and his long is 40 yards. Receiver Tahj Washington, who transferred from Memphis in 2021, is the other returner who has had a big return. Washington’s only returned three kicks but one of them went for 42 yards and his average is 25.00 yards. While three other Trojans have returned kickoffs, none of them have returned one for more than 18 yards. So, Brown and Washington are the team’s most dangerous return guys.
Go Bruins!!! Beat $c!!!
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USC will not be punting or kicking field goals, so not so sure how much of an impact special teams will be. I guess UCLA kickoff returns? There are going to be A LOT of kickoffs by USC on Saturday, so if I were UCLA, I would concentrate my practices in this area for special teams, that and maybe the UCLA punt team, will be getting a more than their fair share of reps on Saturday.