UCLA football’s offensive line shaping up nicely

In UCLA’s final regular-season game against USC, Caleb Benenoch’s arms were a topic of discussion after he swung one at a Trojan defender, earning himself an early trip to the locker room.

After Thursday’s practice, UCLA’s football’s second this spring, the sophomore offensive lineman’s arms were again a topic of discussion, but for a much different reason. As Benenoch spoke with various reporters, his crossed arms bulged out of his shirt, larger and more defined than they were throughout his freshman season.

Having spent the offseason putting in extra work, both in the weight room and on the practice field, Benenoch displayed a completely transformed body, both leaner and stronger.

“He’s like a whole different person,” said offensive line coach Adrian Klemm. “We were laughing the other day; we were looking at him on the Internet, he’s about 350 in high school, belly hanging between his legs in the stance.”

Now without the dangling gut, Benenoch’s body seems to be in peak shape as he makes the difficult switch to left tackle, where he took reps with the first team in practice. Benenoch began last season at right guard, then shifted to right tackle to replace the injured Simon Goines. After Klemm told him of his switch to the left side, Benenoch decided it was time to change his body.

“That’s one of the things coach kept talking about when he told me to move to over to left tackle is just getting your body better and getting leaner and getting bigger, stronger and more physical,” Benenoch said. “So I really took that to heart.”

Though he has the physical aspect of a left tackle taken care of, Benenoch is still working to improve his comfort level at a position he’s never played before. After two days of practice and countless hours of work in the winter, he said he feels comfortable in the new role, but is continuing to work on his familiarity on the left side of the line.

“Imagine if you write with your right hand and you start writing with your left hand,” Benenoch said. “Same thing, just gotta flip the whole thing in your head, that’s all.”

The offseason improvement on the offensive line didn’t stop with Benenoch. Redshirt freshman right tackle Poasi Moala, who coach Jim Mora said had the biggest gains of anyone on the team, and sophomore offensive lineman Kenny Lacy also entered spring practice looking significantly different than at the end of the season. Klemm credited the unit’s wealth of young talent as a catalyzing factor in the effort his players put forth in the winter.

“At a certain point we had to have a heart to heart and, ‘There’s about nine of you guys that are the same age and either guys are transferring or guys are sitting on the bench, one of the two, so you gotta get cracking,'” Klemm said.

A new philosophy

With an offseason of development, the offensive line is shifting from a positional group of instability last season to one that appears to be strength. The improved line will allow UCLA’s offense to play more vertically, as Mora hopes it will, relying the offensive line to protect redshirt junior quarterback Brett Hundley.

“I think you’re gonna have a little bit of experience in the O-line, so obviously that was in the back of my head last year when you got some new pups in there, so yeah, I think it gives us a chance to extend the field a little bit,” said offensive coordinator Noel Mazzone.

While looking for the deep ball more is a focus of the Bruins, Hundley will be without his favorite target from last season, Shaquelle Evans, to connect with down the field. A leading candidate to replace Evans is redshirt junior wide receiver Devin Lucien, who had a strong end to the 2013 season, scoring his first two career touchdowns in UCLA’s final four games of the year.

Lucien, who admitted to feeling a boost of confidence this spring both because of his breakout end of the season and the security of having a significant role on the team, often spoke about proving his doubters wrong last season and during last year’s spring practice.

But Lucien is taking a different approach this season.

“The mentality now is just, ‘Do what you know you can do.’ I wrote myself a little note in my little book that said, ‘Don’t prove anything to anybody, just prove everything to yourself,’” Lucien said. “I want to be great, but I want to prove it to myself, I don’t need to prove it to anybody else and that’s the mentality that I’m carrying into this season.”