Pasadena, CA – UCLA’s final non-conference game is against arguably South Alabama’s biggest game of their season. The Jaguars have never had a winning record since joining the Sun Belt Conference and have been far less than stellar appearing in two bowl games going 0-2. This on paper should be an easy win for the Bruins to pamper their record to 3-0 and look forward to a much more competitive Pac-12 conference.
Stats on paper unfortunately may not appear the way it should be. The Bruins never really got any of their footing throughout the game, and in many instances it put South Alabama with opportunities to stick around. The Bruins never really had any big plays, and their explosive running game never got off the ground. The Jaguars meanwhile capitalized when they needed to, going 9-for-14 on third down conversions, with most of them being converted on five yards or more.
A gift for the Bruins fell on their lap when the Jaguars could have been the team either with the football last or put UCLA in panic mode. On 4th and 2 on the Bruin 22 yard line and less than two minutes to go, the Jaguars line up for a field goal. Instead they set up a spread offense resulting in a Bruin sack. UCLA then jumps for joy and finally had the chance to play Chip Kelly’s game driving down the field with Dorian Thompson Robinson’s arm to start, and then Keegan Jones running for more yardage to set up a chip shot game winning field goal.
“We talk all the time about three things happen in a football game – momentum swings and random events and adversity,” Bruins head coach Chip Kelly said. “The key is that if you’re a competitor, you respond when that happens. Non-competitors react. And I think that our guys responded in a good manner today. We obviously found ourselves in a hole, but think that our sideline and our guys believed every single time that we were going to win the football game. We’ve just got to keep plugging away and keep playing.”
All in all, UCLA’s performance is rather concerning as they get ready for the Pac-12. South Alabama managed a two-score lead sparked by a goal line fumble by Zach Charbonnet. 99 yards later on the other end, the Bruins needed a lot to reflect on at halftime. The Bruins do take the lead by opening up just about everything in the playbook in the third quarter. But South Alabama found its way back scoring 14 points in just 13 seconds. Carter Bradley wasted no time executing on a big pass play that let to a touchdown about three minutes later. Then a Bruin fumble a play after the kickoff deep in the red zone gave Bradley another chance to take advantage of a Bruin miscue.
“I think Carter [Bradley] was outstanding” Kelly said. “He was a kid who had been in the [transfer] portal and he was at Toledo. A lot of people tried to recruit him. We’d talked about it in our visit with you guys on Monday, about how good of a football team that is. That is a really, really good football team. And we knew that this would be closer, back and forth football game all along. There is nothing that they did that surprised us. I thought their running back was outstanding. People bounced off of him. He broke tackles. I think that they got a good scheme, offensively. They did some nice things. So, sometimes you’ve got to give them credit. They made some plays when they had to.”
While UCLA managed a comeback, it took a lot for the Bruins to figure things out. There is really not much to gather about this team after three wins, especially with opponents that gone practically nowhere in seasons past. Fortunately for them, Colorado is next on their schedule. The Buffaloes, who are 0-3, have only scored 30 points in their three losses. We really will not know much about this Bruin team most likely until the end of September when Washington visits the Rose Bowl. By then we can see if the Bruins can be contenders, and maybe fill up more of their seats to give the fans something to look forward to.
“Nothing really matters on the field as long as we play the next play, forget the bad plays,” Bruin linebacker Mo Osling said. “We’ll try to fix them, go back to the film room and correct the correctables, but, at the end of the day, it’s about us.”
