UCLA football leans on veteran defense leadership ahead of season start

This post was updated Aug. 15 at 9:03 p.m.

The Bruin defense has the chance to take another leap this season behind their veteran leadership.

After three consecutive years ranking toward the bottom of the Pac-12 in scoring defense, UCLA football improved to seventh in the conference last season by allowing 30.7 points per game.

Despite going 3-4 in the 2020-2021 campaign to finish fourth in the Pac-12 South, the four losses came by a combined 15 points, including a five-point loss to crosstown rival USC and a double-overtime 48-47 loss to Stanford in the last two games of the season.

However, redshirt senior linebacker Shea Pitts said the team – which is returning starters at every position – is using those losses as fuel for the upcoming season rather than continuing to dwell on what could have been.

“When you lose like that, and you suffer that hurt together – it allows your guys to really grow and understand it,” Pitts said. “I’m here in the locker room after the ‘SC game just hurting, and we remember that hurt. We know what it feels like, so that builds us together.”

Pitts – now in his fifth year with the program – is one of the few players on the team who arrived in Westwood before coach Chip Kelly, when the roster was filled with underclassmen who lacked the game experience the team has now.

Kelly credited the leadership of his veterans such as Pitts, who was recently named to the Wuerffel Trophy watchlist for his community service, for taking on the role to help integrate and teach the younger players in the past few weeks during fall camp.

“All of our guys – no matter what position – have just done a really good job of helping teach the younger guys,” Kelly said. “At some point in time, those younger players are going to have to line up next to that older player, and you just can’t say, ‘Well, he’s young, and he can afford to not know what he’s doing.’”

With just a few practices remaining before the start of the regular season, the team will lean on the veteran leadership of its fourth- and fifth-year players more than ever to prepare its defense for in-game situations.

After practice Sunday, Pitts reflected on his journey over the past few seasons and how he’s used it to grow into the role of a leader for his squad.

“I know how those young kids are feeling because a lot of young guys get here, and they expect it to be like a movie, to get here and start as a true freshman,” Pitts said. “The reality is that’s just not it, so being able to talk to those younger guys and getting guys to understand what the process is on the low and less vocal on the field, that’s where I’m at now.”

Another veteran for the defense is junior linebacker Carl Jones Jr., who saw action in all 19 games during his first two seasons in Westwood and ranked 10th on the team last season with 21 tackles.

Jones said maintaining the versatility and depth of the Bruins’ defense by keeping the younger guys up to speed has been a focus for the team during fall camp.

“Being able to be versatile has been a big factor for our defense,” Jones said. “Having as many people as possible who can be versatile, it just helps the team, and with COVID, you don’t know when somebody’s going to go down. So it’s best to have a lot of people who can do a lot of different things.”

Before flipping to “game mode” a week before the season opener later in August, Kelly said he is using the final practice reps to find each players’ area of strength and further improve his team’s versatility now that the schemes are inserted.

Despite reaching the dog days of preseason camp, Pitts said the energy his teammates bring to the locker room makes it easy to grow as a team every day both on and off the field, while Kelly also said the team has displayed an all-around upbeat and positive nature throughout camp.

“Our guys love playing football, and our coaches love coaching football, so I don’t think anybody out here thinks it’s a grind,” Kelly said. “We’re a ‘get-to’ operation – we’re excited that we get to come out here today and do something, so it’s not a ‘have-to’ operation.”

With the experienced roster and the bright spots from last season appearing already in fall camp, the expectations are there for the Bruins to win more games and finally reach the .500 hump the team has missed the mark on during each year under Kelly thus far.

“We’re just going to take it game by game, and we’re not going to think, ‘Oh, we got to win this amount of games,'” Pitts said. “We’re going to play each game and try to go 1-0 every week and then go from there.”