UCLA football resets after loss to bring A-game to Stanford showdown

After three straight games against top-15 opponents, the Bruins and coach Chip Kelly are making sure they don’t underestimate their next foe.

Despite Stanford’s (3-4, 1-4 Pac-12) slow start to the season and 14-23 record since 2019, the leader of No. 12 UCLA football (6-1, 3-1) still had high praise for Cardinal coach David Shaw ahead of Saturday’s matchup at the Rose Bowl.

“(They’re) obviously really well-coached,” Kelly said. “David is one of the top coaches in college football.”

Stanford rose to prominence under Shaw during the 2010s, but over the past two seasons, the Cardinal are 3-11 in conference play. Stanford started its 2022 campaign with four Pac-12 losses before ending its skid with a 16-14 nonconference win at Notre Dame and a 15-14 conference victory at home against Arizona State.

The Cardinal scored a touchdown on their opening drive against the Fighting Irish but haven’t reached the end zone since and have relied on eight field goals in the last seven-plus quarters of their win streak. They didn’t get inside the opponent’s 15-yard line in the game against the Sun Devils.

Stanford quarterback Tanner McKee ranks third to last in the conference with a 134.8 passer rating while throwing 10 touchdowns versus six interceptions, but Kelly said he views McKee as a one of the best signal-callers in a conference full of great quarterbacks.

“Quarterback (McKee) is outstanding, one of the top quarterbacks that we’ll face,” Kelly said. “He’s a really good decision-maker. He has three huge targets on the outside that can go up and get the football. … He’s making really good decisions, especially in their run game and their RPOs (run-pass options).”

Regardless of its struggling offense, Stanford is in the midst of its first win streak since September 2021. Meanwhile, UCLA is coming off a loss for the first time since last October.

The Bruins’ 45-30 defeat in Eugene snapped a nine-game winning streak dating back to last season, which was the second-longest active streak in the country behind Clemson’s.

Redshirt junior offensive lineman Raiqwon O’Neal said the team has responded well to its first loss in almost a year.

“The group is rebounding really, really, really, really well,” O’Neal said. “We have to get back to our fundamentals, to our standards. Last week, we didn’t meet our standards, so now we had to regroup on Sunday, watch film, get our corrections right so we’ll be ready to go this week.”

Sitting tied for second in the loss column in the Pac-12 standings with USC and Utah, the blue and gold still controls its own destiny when it comes to earning a Pac-12 championship berth – barring a three-way tie. Saturday’s game against the Cardinal begins a three-game stretch for the Bruins against teams with losing records before a potential conference championship appearance-deciding matchup with the Trojans on Nov. 19.

Between now and then, UCLA will try its best to remember the painful lessons it learned in last week’s loss to Oregon while simultaneously moving on and focusing on each upcoming opponent, according to redshirt senior linebacker Bo Calvert.

“That’s the thing that separates guys who kind of have one loss determine their season or have one bad play kind of take them out of a game – you got to have very short-term memory in football,” Calvert said. “But you also have to be able to remember those plays.”

The Bruins fell from No. 9 to No. 12 in the AP poll after what was their fourth straight loss against the Ducks and ninth in the teams’ last 10 matchups.

But Oregon isn’t the only Pac-12 North program that has had the blue and gold’s number in recent years.

While the Bruins have won two of the last three matchups against the Cardinal, they lost the previous 11 battles between the two California schools prior to that. UCLA also hasn’t defeated Stanford at the Rose Bowl since 2008.

Redshirt senior quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson said Saturday’s defeat to Oregon reminded him of previous struggles against that team, and the blue and gold is looking to avoid continuing another negative trend against a different Pac-12 foe.

“Right now, we’re focused on Stanford,” Thompson-Robinson said. “Guys are locked in and focused, and I think that was more of a reset than anything. For sure a wake-up call.”