Five Things: UCLA vs. Oregon

UCLA football (1-2) lost 38-35 in heartbreaking fashion to then-No. 11 Oregon (3-0) on Saturday. Despite the loss, the Bruins showed promising signs on both ends of the field against the conference’s best team, even with a backup quarterback at the helm. Here are five key takeaways from the Bruins’ loss against the Ducks in Eugene.

“UCLA Bruins play hard until the clock runs out”

A common saying in the postgame press conference was that the Bruins never gave up in Saturday’s game.

At multiple points in the game, UCLA looked as if it was going to let go of the rope and be on the wrong side of a blowout, but time and again the Bruins got right back up and fought to make it the competitive game that it was.

UCLA found itself down 14-0 early after four straight disastrous plays that resulted in two Bruin fumbles and two Duck touchdowns. Instead of folding, UCLA roared back and took a 21-17 lead with about three minutes until halftime.

Again, at the end of the game, UCLA found itself down multiple possessions with less than five minutes left but found ways to get stops and make it competitive until the final seconds.

Without nine players on the road against a top-15 team in a stadium where they haven’t won in 16 years, the Bruins never threw in the towel.

For a team with so much stacked against them, that’s all you can ask.

New quarterback, same old problems

Redshirt freshman quarterback Chase Griffin had some nice moments in his first career start.

The former Texas Gatorade State Player of the Year had 19 completions – including seven straight to start the game – for 195 yards and one touchdown through the air. His 61% completion percentage is the best from a UCLA signal-caller this season.

But Griffin also continued a worrisome turnover trend for Bruin quarterbacks, one we’ve seen all too much of from junior Dorian Thompson-Robinson – the usual starter – over the last two years.

Griffin turned the ball over three times, with two interceptions and one fumble. The Ducks eventually capitalized on all three, scoring 21 points off of Griffin’s turnovers alone.

Those points ended up being the difference in UCLA’s three-point loss.

If you feel like you’ve heard this story before, you have. Thompson-Robinson already has 28 career turnovers in the 22 games he has played, and the Bruins lost eight of those games by 10 points or fewer.

So far this year, UCLA ranks 127 out of 127 qualified FBS teams with a -2.3 turnover margin. Regardless of who the starter is in the future, UCLA quarterbacks have to do a better job of protecting the ball; gifting the other team free points is a recipe for failure.

Run defense stifles the conference’s best running team

Coming into this week, Oregon owned the Pac-12’s premier rushing attack.

The Ducks averaged a conference-leading 269 rushing yards per game in their first two games this year and boast the preseason All-Pac-12 First Team running back in CJ Verdell.

This week, however, the Bruins run defense got the better of the matchup.

Verdell finished the game with just 18 yards on 12 carries, a ghastly 1.5 yards per carry from the conference’s best back. As a team, Oregon had just 88 rushing yards and couldn’t get anything going on the ground all game.

The defensive performance marked the second straight week where UCLA held its opponent to under 100 yards on the ground, and the Bruins now rank 36th in the FBS in rushing yards allowed per game.

After an anomaly of a performance in week one where the Bruins gave up 264 rushing yards, it seems as if the addition of coach Brian Norwood to the defensive coaching staff has paid dividends for defensive coordinator Jerry Azzinaro’s unit.

The Ducks still were able to move the ball through the air fairly easily, so Norwood’s new 4-2-5 scheme hasn’t been perfect, but if the Bruins keep stifling other teams’ running game like this, it should tighten up the defense as a whole.

Demetric Felton, workhorse

All of coach Chip Kelly’s teams have had a go-to running back.

From LaMichael James and Kenjon Barner at Oregon to Joshua Kelley the past two seasons at UCLA, Kelly has always had a back he felt confident handing the ball to north of 20 times a game.

After three weeks of the 2020 season, it has become clear that Kelly has that again in redshirt senior running back Demetric Felton.

The converted wide receiver stands at just 5’10 and 200 pounds – not the typical stature for an every-down back. That hasn’t stopped Felton from performing like one.

Felton set career highs across the board in every major rushing category Saturday, with 167 yards and two touchdowns on 34 carries. This is a bit of a trend for Felton of late, with him setting a then-career-high in rushes a week before against California with 25, and he was four yards short of setting a then-career-high in rushing yards too.

Perhaps even more impressive was Felton’s usage in short-yardage situations – like his one-yard plunge for his first score Saturday – typically saved for big power backs.

After spending four years with the program in an ever-changing hybrid role, Felton seems to have found where he works best – a workhorse, every-down, between the tackles running back.

Less preparation leads to better results

For the second consecutive week, UCLA had less time to prepare its full game plan than usual, and for the second consecutive week, UCLA exceeded expectations.

Coincidence? I think not.

The Bruins had mere hours to prepare for Sunday’s matchup with the Golden Bears. This week, they learned midweek that they would be without nine players, including their starting quarterback.

One of the complaints of this current coaching regime is that it tries to force an overly complicated pro-style offense. But with less time to prepare and more time to just play, the coaching staff can’t trip over itself anymore. The result so far has been success on both sides of the ball.

The offense is faster-paced and looks the part of a more traditional Chip Kelly offense. In the past two games, UCLA has been able to establish a rushing attack which has led to over 900 yards of total offense.

The aggressiveness did hurt the offense at times, though, like the attempted Hail Mary at the end of the first half that resulted in seven points for the Ducks, but overall it helped more than it hurt.

The defense has also been more potent, sending more pressure throughout the game. Against Oregon, UCLA racked up four sacks and 10 tackles for loss.

It will be interesting to see if next week – assuming it has the requisite time to prepare for its matchup against Arizona – if UCLA continues its more aggressive ways, including the new-look offense.

If it does, we could look back at this stretch of Bruin football as the turning point of the Chip Kelly era.