This post was updated Sept. 5 at 7:46 p.m.

A holding penalty on the first play followed by a three-and-out and a blocked punt returned for a touchdown.

Down seven barely a minute into the game, the Bruins couldn’t have started their 2022 season much worse.

“We dug ourselves a hole, but we didn’t continue to keep digging,” said coach Chip Kelly.

Despite the early mistakes that put it into a 17-7 second-quarter hole, UCLA football (1-0) clawed its way back to take down Bowling Green (0-1) 45-17 on Saturday at the Rose Bowl. The blue and gold didn’t give up another score after conceding 17 points early in the contest.

“A lot of guys on this team have been through this so many times,” said redshirt senior quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson. “We have a lot of third-, fourth-, fifth-year guys that have been in the program, and they know how to be college athletes. They know how to be football players, and when stuff gets hard, not go in the tank.”

After the special teams mistake put the Falcons on the board early, the Bruins countered with a 68-yard touchdown scramble from Thompson-Robinson. However, a muffed punt and Thompson-Robinson interception thrown directly to the chest of a Bowling Green defender stymied any chance of UCLA taking an early lead.

Down 17-7 in the second quarter with the ball one yard from paydirt, the Bruins earned a delay of game that pushed them back five yards and brought out the boos in Pasadena. While UCLA was forced to settle for a field goal, that drive would kick off a streak of 17 unanswered points for the Bruins that granted them a seven-point advantage heading into the halftime locker room.

Redshirt junior running back Keegan Jones capped off the scoring spree with a 52-yard receiving touchdown, juking past a Bowling Green defender down the sideline on his way to the end zone.

With Jones and some of the other offensive weapons seeing regular action for the first time as Bruins, Thompson-Robinson said he’s still trying to figure out his offensive personnel.

“We have a lot of new faces on the outside, so just seeing how guys move, how guys work, who can we use in different situations,” Thompson-Robinson said. “You could see when Keegan gets the ball in his hands what he can really do with the ball.”

Outgaining its opponent by more than triple its yardage output in the first two quarters, UCLA continued its surge in the second half.

A missed opportunity in the red zone – punctuated by a missed 28-yard field goal off the leg of redshirt junior kicker Nicholas Barr-Mira – stopped the Bruins from pushing the lead to three possessions in the third quarter. But six seconds into the final period, the second rushing touchdown of the game for Thompson-Robinson put UCLA up by 21.

Bowling Green went scoreless for more than 40 minutes to finish the game after its 17 quick points, with UCLA scoring 38 straight points to close out the contest.

“I wasn’t even looking at the scoreboard,” said senior linebacker Carl Jones Jr. “If a play happened, we kept pushing. We didn’t flinch. That was one of the biggest things – defense didn’t flinch, offense didn’t flinch.”

The Bruins totaled 626 yards of offense on the afternoon, with Thompson-Robinson throwing for nearly 300 yards through the air and senior running back Zach Charbonnet tacking on more than 100 yards on the ground. The Falcons, on the other hand, were limited to just 162 yards of offense.

Kelly said despite the 28-point win, his team still has plenty of room for improvement following its slow start Saturday.

“Winston Churchill said, ‘The problems of victory are a lot more agreeable than the problems of defeat, but they’re no less difficult,’” Kelly said. “We have things we have to get better at, and I think that’s what college football is.”

With temperatures at the Rose Bowl reaching more than 100 degrees Saturday, a record-low 27,143 fans turned out to see the Bruins – more than 5,000 spectators less than the blue and gold’s 2021 season opener.

While the heat impacted the turnout, Carl Jones said it didn’t play as much of a role on the field for his team.

“Throughout the whole week, we knew it was going to be hot,” Carl Jones said. “We were just prepared. Ross (team nutritionist Ross Shumway) had us hydrated. And we’re going to thank Ross for sure because I think they (Bowling Green) had about eight cramps.”