BREAKING NEWS: UCLA Names DeShaun Foster as Next Football Coach
The former Bruin RB is back in Westwood after a brief tenure with the Las Vegas Raiders
Well, this is a bit of a surprise.
This morning, UCLA announced that DeShaun Foster will return to Westwood as the new head coach of the Bruins, replacing Chip Kelly.
Martin Jarmond issued the following statement a short time ago.
Bruins,
We are excited to announce today that one of our all-time great Bruins, DeShaun Foster, will be the next head football coach at UCLA.
DeShaun has been on UCLA’s staff for 10 years. He spent the past seven seasons as our running backs coach and served as associate head coach in 2023. In 2022, he was a nominee for the Broyles Award, presented annually to college football’s top assistant coach.
His running backs group led the Pac-12 in rushing offense in each of the last two seasons and has posted three consecutive top-20 national finishes. Among the standout running backs DeShaun has coached at UCLA are NFL players Zach Charbonnet, Brittain Brown, Demetric Felton Jr. and Joshua Kelley.
As a Bruin student-athlete, DeShaun was a key player on UCLA’s 1998 Pac-10 Championship team as a freshman and earned All-America honors as a senior in 2001 before embarking on a seven-year NFL career highlighted by his 33-yard touchdown in Super Bowl XXXVIII. Â
Throughout our comprehensive search, DeShaun resonated with us from the start, as we are looking for a coach with integrity, energy and passion; someone who is a great teacher, who develops young men, is a great recruiter and fully embraces the NIL landscape to help our student-athletes. DeShaun checks all of those boxes and then some. He is a leader of men and a true Bruin. We are excited for the future of this program with DeShaun Foster at the helm!
Go Bruins!
Martin Jarmond
The Alice and Nahum Lainer Family Director of Athletics
More later as this story develops….
Go Bruins!!!
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This is a fairly underwhelming hire to me, but I wasn't in the interviews, so that's just my 40,000 foot view of it. But mostly thank god they didn't settle for Flack or Shaw or some other retread. Foster may have what it takes to re-energize this program, but I don't see that he has any resumé for rebuilding a program. I probably would have preferred Rees or White in that regard, but Foster does have some of the same attributes and intangibles that made those guys attractive candidates.
Since he's the choice, let's see how things go for the next year or two. If Foster's ceiling looks good, then fantastic. If he looks to be in over his head, we have every reason and right to move on quickly.
He was a great running back for UCLA. Dorrel and Neuheisel were also great players for UCLA, but neither panned out as a head coach. I do not know how Foster will do as a first time head coach. But for certain, we must get behind him to win!