[Online exclusive]: Olson sputters a bit in season’s second game

Listening to Ben Olson by his locker in the Rose Bowl on Saturday night, you could have thought that his No. 11 Bruins had just pulled a gritty, if at times sluggish, win over an elite football program.

“This was a good win against a very good team that had won 11 straight games coming in here,” Olson said of UCLA’s 27-17 win over BYU Saturday night. “I felt I could have played better, but we made the plays to win a very hard fought game.”

Then again, walking out of the parking lot after the game, listening to fans gripe about Olson’s lackluster performance, you could have surely figured the UCLA quarterback had just lost the home opener to, say, Appalachian State.

So, was Olson’s encouraging analysis on target, or was the Bruins’ disappointing offensive output – 236 total yards, only 126 through the air – a sign that this team is not nearly balanced and consistent enough for a BCS-worthy season? Will Olson finally live up to his billing as the former No. 1 quarterback-recruit coming out of Thousand Oaks and make good for the local program? It’s still too early to tell, but Olson has done little to answer any of these questions thus far.

It would have been tough for Olson to find a suitable encore to follow up the season-opening win over conference doormat Stanford. He threw for 286 yards and five touchdowns as the offense amassed 624 total yards en route to a 45-17 victory.

It’s safe to say that what happened against BYU wasn’t what Olson had in mind. Despite his defense causing three turnovers ““ one being a Trey Brown interception returned for a touchdown ““ Olson seemed tentative. Despite his offense nursing a 20-3 lead coming out of halftime, Olson looked rattled.

“I was a little bit off rhythm,” Olson said. “Every game is not going to be perfect. But the key is to make the key plays when it counts, and I think we did.”

Olson didn’t think the modest numbers – he finished 13 of 28 for 126 yards with an interception – reflected UCLA’s offense so much as a stout BYU defense. Perhaps that is true. But the offense’s inability to put away an inferior opponent in the friendly confines of the Rose Bowl seems to validate the cynics’ concerns that the 2007 Bruin offense is much like the 2006 version: not so much dull or explosive, but strangely erratic from week to week and incapable of providing the defense with enough points to protect a lead. And Olson knows that the criticism ultimately falls on him.

“I stopped worrying what people thought about me in high school,” he said.

Pubescent presumptions aside, there are parts of Olson’s game that are still being exploited, primarily his shoddy footwork in the pocket and his inability to move through his progressions in less than four or five seconds. When Olson had adequate time to throw on the Cougars, he often made one of two mistakes. He took a small hop before he released the ball, which fouled up his timing and made it nearly impossible to throw the ball to the sidelines with much authority. More importantly, though, Olson exhibited some of the old problems he has had with the West coast offense. He would stare down a receiver and a force a pass into a covered area or take too long to find the open secondary target.

These are nitpicky problems for a freshman quarterback in his first year in the UCLA system, but they are much more troubling when committed by the starter who is in his third year in the program.

“I felt I could have played better, but it wasn’t a case of me not feeling comfortable,” he said. “It just comes down to execution. We have to execute in the red zone and not settle for short field goals like we did (Saturday).

“We have to be more opportunistic and score points off of turnovers as well, which we didn’t do (Saturday). But we also managed to close out a game with one last touchdown drive at the end of the fourth quarter to seal it. And that’s what we have to remember, also.”

Olson has heard the criticism and welcomes the high expectations – he insists that’s why he chose to transfer to UCLA from BYU after his freshman year – and he has found a keen way to answer the questions with subtlety and some sophistication.

But it can’t be encouraging that Olson is still facing the very same questions about his game at this point in his UCLA career.