UCLA football reinforces roster with new hires, returns experienced personnel

The Bruins are mixing old and new to kick off the season.

UCLA football began spring practices Tuesday, marking the official teamwide start of the 2022 campaign. Among the familiar faces on the field were coach Chip Kelly, who signed a new four-year contract Jan. 14, and senior quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson, who is taking his fifth year of eligibility granted to all NCAA student-athletes because of the pandemic.

Entering his fourth and final spring camp as a member of the blue and gold, Thompson-Robinson said he’s excited about the potential of the new roster.

“It feels great,” Thompson-Robinson said. “I really like where the team is at right now.”

Thompson-Robinson is coming off an All-Pac-12 senior season in which he set career highs in yards per attempt, rushing yards and rushing touchdowns. The signal-caller has been the team’s primary starting quarterback in each of his four years with the program, entering the new campaign as the conference’s most experienced at his position.

After UCLA’s 2021 season came to a premature end when the Holiday Bowl was called off hours before the game was supposed to kick off, Thompson-Robinson said he considered all his options – including a jump to the professional ranks.

The quarterback said Kelly talked with him about entering the draft given the weak quarterback class, but Thompson-Robinson ultimately came to the conclusion that there was still work to be done at the collegiate level.

“Talking with coach Kelly, I think that was the biggest part in me returning – listening to what he had to say,” Thompson-Robinson said. “He was actually the one encouraging me to leave, too, so that was pretty awkward at times.”

Kelly said he wanted his signal-caller to return in the “worst way,” but added that it was his job to give Thompson-Robinson all the information he could about a potential decision to go professional.

The fifth-year coach said having the team’s most experienced player coming back at the quarterback position will be a big boost for the Bruins.

“We’re old in some positions, but we’re young in other positions,” Kelly said. “So to have the quarterback, really the leader, coming back for year five is really huge for us.”

Thompson-Robinson is not the only member of UCLA’s offense to return for another year with the blue and gold, with junior running back Zach Charbonnet coming back after leading the Bruins in rushing yards following his transfer from Michigan.

But while Kelly, Thompson-Robinson and Charbonnet are all giving it another go, the same can’t be said for the rest of the 2021 offense. UCLA is losing its top two receivers from this past season – redshirt juniors wide receiver Kyle Philips and tight end Greg Dulcich – in addition to three starting offensive linemen in junior Sean Rhyan, redshirt junior Alec Anderson and redshirt senior Paul Grattan Jr. to the NFL Draft.

On the other side of the ball, the Bruins are also losing starters at every position. UCLA will be without four of its five leading tacklers from a year ago, with players graduating, entering the draft or transferring.

Senior linebacker Bo Calvert – one of the few starting defenders to return after taking his extra year of eligibility – said he has already noticed his veteran presence on the field.

“It’s kind of a weird experience,” Calvert said. “New guys come in and they kind of think, ‘This guy’s a GA (graduate assistant),’ or ‘Is this guy an assistant on the strength staff?’ Soon enough they realize I’m out here going out there with them. … I got a mustache going on, (so) some of these guys are asking how old I am.”

Along with the roster turnover, the Bruins will also see five coaching staff changes, including at both the offensive and defensive coordinator positions after the resignation of defensive coordinator Jerry Azzinaro and the departure of offensive coordinator and offensive line coach Justin Frye in January.

While no official replacement has been named for the offensive coordinator position – the Bruins were without one in Kelly’s first season in 2018 – UCLA named four new defensive assistant coaches.

Bill McGovern will become the defensive coordinator while former Bruin linebacker Ken Norton Jr. and Ikaika Malloe are set to take over the inside and outside linebacker position groups, respectively. Chad Kauha’aha’a will coach the defensive line.

Kelly said he hopes the new coaches’ professional experience will improve a defense that has ranked in the bottom half of the Pac-12 in three of the last four seasons. McGovern, Norton and Malloe have all been defensive coordinators previously, with Norton manning the role for the Seattle Seahawks from 2018 to 2021.

“Some of the new kind of things that are going on in that league (the NFL) that are trickling down to college football, they’ll be implementing a little bit,” Kelly said. “And then blending it in with what we do. We’re not throwing the baby out with the bathwater.”

To patch up the personnel departures, Kelly brought in an 11-man recruiting class to go along with 11 players from the transfer portal.

With 12 open spring practices left to go, Thompson-Robinson said he hopes his team will be able to integrate all the new pieces in time for the fall.

“We all work out every day and we all train every day – build chemistry on and off the field,” Thompson-Robinson said. “I think we’ll be all right.”