Bo Knows: UCLA football’s underwhelming early-season performances prove ominous

For the first month of UCLA’s season, the storyline was the same: Just wait until the Bruins face a real opponent, then we’ll get a real sense of how good they are.

That was the justification fans, pundits and I made for why ESPN’s favorite dark horse national champion pick looked merely mediocre against its non-conference opponents.

A big win over then-No. 15 Arizona State and a landslide atop the AP poll set UCLA up for its chance to move into the top five and prove its true talent against a “real opponent” in Oregon the next week.

But the real truth beat the Bruins to the punch.

Against a middling Utah team coming off a loss to lowly-regarded Washington State, UCLA showed us what we’ve really known since the Bruins limped to a win over Virginia on August 30.

That’s the team they really are.

UCLA isn’t the offensive powerhouse led by a Heisman front-runner and surefire top-10 pick quarterback it was made out to be in the preseason. Redshirt junior quarterback Brett Hundley and the offense have really had just one impressive performance this year.

And as for the defense that looked leaky against Memphis and Virginia – teams with reputations of having lousy offenses – those performances certainly seem to be pretty representative of the unit, regardless of the opponent.

So as the Bruins tumbled with the rest instead of capitalizing on the four losses among the top-six ranked teams, all the preseason hype and the College Football Playoff’s hopes officially died.

Technically, a spot in the four-team playoffs is not out of reach for the No. 18 Bruins, given Saturday’s shakeup of the top-25 and the likelihood that finding four undefeated teams for the playoffs seems remote.

Realistically, though, the Bruins have no shot. Nor do they deserve one.

They’ve been a victim of media-manufactured hype and overly high expectations all season. And all season, all the Bruins have shown is that they’re merely mediocre.

They’ve faced four backup quarterbacks and had some issues defensively against all of them.

In the Bruins’ first five games, the supposedly easier part of their schedule, they’ve had just one game decided by more than one score.

They’ve allowed 23 sacks, the third-highest mark in the FBS. Meanwhile, they’ve sacked opponents just seven times all season, showing an uncreative defensive scheme.

They’ve done all this against opponents with a combined record of 17-9. How can a team that has struggled so frequently against such middling teams be expected to earn one of four spots among the nation’s elite?

It’s a simple answer, one we’ve known all along, and one that Saturday’s loss to Utah reaffirmed: They’re not.