Filthy Five
Redshirt senior center Ryan Taylor, seen here against Stanford at the Rose Bowl on Sept. 11, and the UCLA offensive linemen paved the way for 264 Bruin rushing yards in UCLA’s 34-12 win over Texas in Austin Saturday. Taylor, who is from Denison, Texas, was named Pac-10 Offensive Player of the Week after his play in the upset win.
By Eli Smukler
Sept. 28, 2010 1:30 a.m.
AUSTIN, Texas ““ UCLA’s game against Texas at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium on Saturday was going to be huge for redshirt senior center Ryan Taylor, no matter what.
As the Bruins’ only native of the Lone Star state, he received a lot of attention before the game by teammates and the media alike as a kind of intermediary between the two storied programs meeting on the gridiron.
When fellow offensive lineman and redshirt senior Micah Kia gave up his captaincy so that Taylor could stand on those big orange horns at the center of the field for the opening coin toss, it was a big moment for the boy from Denison, Texas. But with 35 friends and family members in the stands cheering him on, what Taylor really wanted was the victory.
“I grew up a Texas fan, but for one week, I had to put the horns down,” he said. “I had to do it for my team.”
Taylor’s performance on Saturday made him the Pac-10 Offensive Player of the Week, making him the first lineman since 2003 to win the award.
The success Taylor has found since taking over the Bruins’ starting job right before the beginning of the season parallels that of the offensive line as a whole and is a crucial reason for the team’s remarkable September turnaround.
“Being in his home state, playing against guys he knows, it was a very emotional game for him and he deserved it,” Kia said. “He’s worked really hard and it’s all culminating now.”
See, UCLA’s offensive line was one of the team’s biggest question marks in training camp, and now, a month later, the linemen have got themselves a catchy nickname.
Let’s make this clear: Question marks do not get nicknames.
The Bruins’ front line, or “The Filthy Five” as teammates and coaches have begun calling them recently, has shed its status as a group of second choices and distinguished themselves as a cohesive and even dominant unit.
“Nothing happens on accident,” Kia said. “All around, these guys have put in the work. It’s starting to pay off.”
It paid off big time on Saturday in UCLA’s 34-12 upset win over then-No. 7 Texas. Even though the Longhorns’ run defense had the best numbers in the country, the Bruins’ passing game was not clicking, so UCLA was forced to take it to them on the ground.
The Bruins were unfazed, rushing for 264 yards on the day, including one stretch in which they ran on 22 consecutive plays.
After the game, nearly everyone on the team credited the offensive line for stepping up to its toughest challenge of the season so far.
Redshirt sophomore quarterback Kevin Prince acknowledged the offensive linemen’s part in his 38-yard touchdown sneak in the third quarter.
“Obviously the guys up front are doing their job,” Prince said.
“During practice, we were thinking that we were going to have to rely a little bit on the pass,” junior wideout Taylor Embree added. “But once again (we had) another week where our “˜Filthy Five’ were in there getting the job done.”
The UCLA running game was ranked 97th in the Football Bowl Subdivision last season. Through the first four games of this year, they are No. 18.
Much of that improvement has been credited to the new pistol offense implemented by coach Rick Neuheisel, but the offensive line’s development might have just as much to do with it.
Despite losing nearly all of the players who were supposed to start this year to various injuries, ineligibilities and Mormon missions, the offensive line as it currently stands is actually the oldest unit on the team.
Each of the filthy ““ that’s a compliment ““ will be at least 22 years old by the end of the year and, as Neuheisel said, each have “their own sordid stories.”
Redshirt junior right tackle Mike Harris is the only one of them to start at his current position all of last season, but originally the spot was assigned to the team captain Kia, who has sat the last two games with an ankle injury. The rest of the line ““ left tackle Sean Sheller, left guard Darius Savage, right guard Eddie Williams and Taylor ““ are all redshirt seniors, but they had just eight combined starts at UCLA among them going into the season.
They didn’t let that stop them from preparing like veterans, though.
“We had a lot of guys go down, but we’ve had a lot of guys step up too,” Taylor said.
Playing at positions without much individual recognition, the offensive line has created a unique bond among themselves. As proof, Kia’s gift to his teammate before the Texas game garnered the praise of Neuheisel in his postgame press conference.
“That’s when you get excited about your team, when they get excited about each other,” Neuheisel said. “They care about each other. They’re sharing with one another.”
Taylor could not have been happier with the way the line performed on his return home, but he’s even more excited about the prospects it has created for them in the near future.
“That’s just our senior leadership,” he said. “I feel like we have a lot of good football still to play.”
