SMQB: UCLA's Offense Is Considerably Slower than Last Season

After two games, we can see an offensive trend emerging and it doesn't bode well for the rest of the season.

UCLA QB Ethan Garbers (Photo Credit: Ross Turteltaub/uclabruins.com)

---

When writing the Sunday Morning Quarterback, I have always tended to include UCLA’s postgame press conferences.

So, after witnessing the Bruins’ annihilation by Indiana last night, I was curious to see what UCLA head coach DeShaun Foster had to say after the game.

Here’s the video of Coach Foster’s postgame press conference:

After a loss like yesterday’s, it hard to see anything positive. The offense looked terrible. The defense looked awful. Even the special teams had problems.

Frankly, it’s hard to suggest that there was anything good for UCLA football in yesterday’s game.

The running game struggled for the second consecutive game. The team averaged just 3.7 yards per rush. TJ Harden had just 48 yards rushing on 12 attempts. Quarterback Ethan Garbers gained 21 yards on seven carries. No other Bruin gained more than 13 yards on the ground. Essentially, the ground game was non-existant.

This may be the most unexplainable part of UCLA’s struggles so far. Prior to this season, DeShaun Foster was the Bruin running backs coach for seven seasons. Meanwhile, Eric Bienemy was one of the most prolific college running backs to ever play the game. As if that’s not enough, running backs coach Marcus Thomas worked alongside Foster at UCLA as an offensive analyst. Offensive line coach Juan Castillo has 18 years of NFL experience as an offensive line coach. This makes the breakdown of the running game even more bizzare.

This leads me to believe that either the coaches aren’t effectively communicating the offensive scheme to the players or the players are just not executing the plays effectively. If they aren’t executing the plays effectively, it begs the question as to why they aren’t doing so. Is it a matter that the offensive personnel aren’t as good as opposing defenses? Is it a case of the offensive personnel being unprepared for the defense they are facing? What exactly is the problem with the inability of the offense to executive the plays being called by Bienemy?

Potentially more troublesome was the complete breakdown of the Bruin defense. Two weeks ago against Hawai’i, the defense didn’t allow a touchdown after the first drive of the game. Last night, the defense seemed to just roll over to the Indiana offense. Play after play, the defense was unable to stop the Hoosiers. To add insult to injury, the UCLA defense allowed the Hoosiers to convert on 9 of 12 third downs after holding Hawai’i to just 4 of 14 two weeks ago. After sacking Brayden Schager five times two weeks ago, the Bruins were unable to sack Kurtis Rourke even once.

From a strategic standpoint, I have a real issue with Coach Foster choosing to kick a field goals when he did. The first field goal attempt came with UCLA already down 14-0.

Of course, that attempt followed a 3rd-and-15 pass from Garbers to Matavao that only gained eight. I went back and watched this particular play again because I found it to be particularly problematic. When I watched it today, I found it to be even worse than I did while seeing it live at the Rose Bowl.

This wasn’t just a case of a quarterback being under pressure and needing to get rid of the ball and throwing to a receiver who was open even though he was short of the sticks. Nope. Not at all. This was a designed screen pass to the tight end.

Why the heck is the coaching staff calling a screen pass on third-and-15? Whose bright idea was it to call a play that had very little chance of getting the first down? Was it Bienemy or Foster? That’s hard to say, though Coach Foster said after the Hawai’i game that all plays were ultimately his decision. I don’t know that that was the case, but this wasn’t a situation where the receiver just didn’t get to the sticks or the quarterback went through his progressions until he found an open receiver who was short. It was a designed screen pass. On 3rd-and-15. That’s bad playing calling period. That FORCED the Bruins to send out the field goal unit to try a 41-yard field goal attempt.

Now, forget about the fact that the field goal attempt was no good and let’s go through this thinking again.

You’re near the end of the first quarter and you’re already down 14-0. It’s 3rd-and-15 on the Indiana 31. So you call a screen pass which is unlikely to gain the necessary yardage to get the first down, forcing the team into a field goal attempt? So, while Indiana is scoring touchdowns, you’re going to kick field goals?

How do you win football games that way? It’s Dorrellian. It’s also very conservative play calling and shows little faith in the ability of your offense to get the first down, much less score from inside your opponent’s territory.

Is the offensive line that bad that you couldn’t hold off the pass rush long enough to take a shot beyond the sticks, or heaven forbid, at the end zone?

Let’s assume for a minute that the field goal attempt had been successful. The score would have been 14-3 at the time, 21-10 at halftime and a 42-16 final.

Ultimately, the problem came down to a lack of scoring opportunities for the Bruins compared to the Hoosiers. Indiana had five possessions in the first half. We’ll ignore the last possession since it came with less than a minute to go in the half and they just killed the clock. On three of their first four possessions of the game, they scored touchdowns.

In the second half, the Hoosiers had four possessions and they scored touchdowns on three of those four as well. So, Indiana scored touchdowns on six of their eight drives in this game. Aside from the fact that the defense didn’t give UCLA a chance to win the game, this means that the Bruin offense would have needed to be scoring touchdowns too.

And, that just didn’t happen.

On their first three possessions, the Bruins went fumble, missed field goal, punt. The fourth possession of the first half finally resulted in a touchdown.

Their second half possessions weren’t much better. UCLA went field goal, field goal, interception, punt after halftime.

You just can’t win games with those kind of results.

For comparison, let’s look at last year’s game against Southern Cal. The first half saw 15 possessions between the teams (ignoring the one at the end of the half). Southern Cal had eight and UCLA had seven. In the first half, the Bruins went touchdown, punt, touchdown, punt, missed field goal, punt, punt while the Trojans went downs, punt, fumble, interception, touchdown, punt, missed field goal, field goal.

For the Bruins, the second half went touchdown, field goal, touchdown, end of game. Meanwhile, the Trojans went fumble return touchdown Bruins, field goal, downs, touchdown.

I don’t know if the offensive difference for UCLA is because the Bruins are not running a no-huddle offense or if it perhaps has more to do with the defense stopping drives. I’d guess it’s probably somewhere in between.

The UCLA offense ran just 58 plays against Hawai’i while the Rainbow Warriors ran 70 plays and the Bruins ran 50 plays yesterday to the Hoosiers 62.

For comparison, UCLA ran 76 plays against Southern Cal last year and average 72 plays per game over the course of the 2023 season.

While Chip Kelly may have been a bust as a head coach in terms of overall success of his time in Westwood, his philosophy of playing fast to get more scoring opportunities seemed to make sense. The more plays you can run, the more opportunities a team has to score.

Right now, the Bruin offense is stuck in neutral under Eric Bienemy, and that’s going to continue to be a huge problem for this team if the defense cannot get opposing offenses off the field.


Go Bruins.

---

Thanks again for supporting The Mighty Bruin. Your paid subscriptions make this site possible. Questions, comments, story ideas, angry missives and more can be sent to to @TheMightyBruin on Twitter.