UCLA Football Preview: Bruin Defense Will Need to Stop a Pass-Happy Arizona Offense
UCLA Football Preview: Bruin Defense Will Need to Stop a Pass-Happy Arizona Offense
The Wildcats tend to throw the ball about 58% of the time.
Given that Jedd Fisch was UCLA’s offensive coordinator in 2017, the Arizona offense should look somewhat familiar to Bruin fans. The Wildcats have run almost the same number of offensive plays as the Bruins, but Fisch’s play selection has been substantially different.
Arizona has run the ball just 266 times this season while they have attempted 361 passes. That means that the Wildcats are throwing the ball 57.6% of the time; whereas, UCLA runs the ball 55.4% of the time.
There are several things which may explain why Arizona throws more often. First and foremost, it could be do to the fact that the Wildcats may be playing from behind because a team tends to throw more when they are down in an attempt to catch up. Another potential explanation may be Arizona’s lack of rushing touchdowns. The Wildcats have only scored 11 touchdowns on the ground.
They have scored more than twice as many times through the air. Starting quarterback Jayden de Laura has thrown 22 touchdown passes while backup Noah Fifita has added one more.
Arizona has also run for substantially fewer rushing yards than UCLA. The Bruins have gained almost 2200 yards on the ground this season while the Wildcats have only gained 1240 yards.
It’s also possible that Arizona’s running backs just aren’t as good as UCLA’s. The Wildcats are only in the second year of Jedd Fisch’s tenure and he may not have improved recruiting enough yet to have improved the talent in the running backs room. The evidence of this could be the fact that Arizona is only averaging 4.7 yards per carry. While that’s not bad, it’s still not nearly as good as UCLA’s average of 6.3 yards per attempt.
Let’s look at Arizona’s offensive personnel.
Quarterback
While Arizona lists four quarterbacks on this week’s depth chart, only two have thrown passes this season. Jayden de Laura is a sophomore quarterback from Honolulu. He is averaging 312.56 yards per game. He has picked apart opposing defenses for more than 400 yards passing three times and almost did it a fourth time against Southern Cal when he threw for 380 yards. Not surprisingly, his best game of the season came against Colorado when he threw for 484 yards and six touchdowns.
He’s also thrown for four TDs twice this season — against San Diego State and Washington — while also throwing for three against Southern Cal.
All of this raises the question as to whether the Bruins will be able to stop the Arizona passing attack. If they can’t, this game could end up being closer than it should be.
Running Game
It looks like the Arizona running game takes of a committee approach rather than having a featured back like UCLA does. Four Wildcats each have between 50 and 75 carries each with varying success.
Junior Michael Wiley leads the team in rushing with 410 rushing yards and four touchdowns on 73 carries. That’s an average of 5.3 yards per carry. While good, it’s not as good as Zach Charbonnet’s 7.5 yards per carry on 128 carries.
Wiley’s backups are senior DJ Williams and freshman Jonah Coleman. Williams has the best average ypc on the team. He’s averaging 6.3 ypc and he has 336 yards on just 53 carries. He’s added two scores. Meanwhile, Coleman has gained 287 yards on 63 carries with three touchdowns. He’s averaging 4.6 ypc.
The fourth Wildcat with more than 50 carries is de Laura. Now, because of the way college football counts sacks, de Laura has lost 173 yards which is more than half of the 311 yards he initially gained on the ground. In fact, Arizona has given up 17 sacks on the season to their opponents, which would seem to indicate that an aggressive pass rush should help stymie the passing game. So, overall, de Laura isn’t the same kind of running threat which DTR is. Will he take off? Sure, but he just isn’t very effective running the ball as evidenced by his average of just 15.33 rushing yards per game.
Passing Game
Having looked at Arizona’s QBs and their rushing attack, it’s clear that the passing game will be important to the Wildcats’ game plan.
The bottom line here is that de Laura will spread the ball around. Five different receivers are averaging more than 25 yards per game and seven different guys are averaging at least ten yards per reception.
Jacob Cowing is de Laura’s favorite target. Cowing has grabbed 65 balls for 846 yards and seven touchdowns. He’s averaging 13.02 yards per catch and 94 yards per game.
Sophomore Dorian Singer may not be de Laura’s favorite target but he is the Wildcats’ deepest threat. His 73-yard reception against Southern Cal is the team’s longest completion of the season. Singer has scored five times and caught 49 passes for 755 yards.
Tetairoa McMillan is a freshman receiver from Servite HS in Orange County. While his 35 receptions puts him third on the team, he is leading the Wildcats in yards per catch with an average of 17.43. He is also tied with Cowing for the team lead in touchdown catches with seven.
Tight end Tanner McLachlin has added 27 receptions for 362 yards and two touchdowns while Wiley has made 22 catches for 205 yards coming out of the backfield.
Analysis
It looks like the way to stop the Wildcats’ offense is by stopping de Laura. Opposing defenses have been successful at sacking him frequently, indicating that Arizona’s offensive line is not where it needs to be yet for the Cats to be better than they are. It also indicates that de Laura is probably more of a pocket passer than he is a scrambler.
For this reason, I expect the Bruin defense to try to put a lot of pressure on de Laura since a well-timed sack can significantly disrupt Arizona’s offense and it looks like the offensive line gives up plenty of them.
Go Bruins!!!
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