“Returners” are a prized possession in today’s NCAA landscape.

With the increasing popularity of the transfer portal and the seemingly constant coaching carousels that define college football, sustaining continuity is a tall task.

And UCLA football is not immune to turnover.

Returners from the Bruins’ 2025 roster make up just 50.9% of their 2026 112-person roster.

UCLA’s coaching staff – particularly head coach Bob Chesney, offensive coordinator Dean Kennedy and defensive coordinator Colin Hitschler – have said returners redshirt sophomore quarterback Nico Iamaleava, junior wide receiver Mikey Matthews and redshirt sophomore safety Cole Martin are players who have embraced leadership roles.

[Related: ‘Leadership’ is proving to be the most important word in UCLA football’s lexicon]

But when 19 new coaches are added to the staff, the team culture, standards and expectations are entirely new.

Add in 57 newcomers, and it is Day One for the majority of the athletes on the gridiron.

But in a hurricane of change, it is the 10 James Madison transfers – the lone players familiar with Chesney, his staff, the long-term culture he wants to establish and the day-to-day operations of his program – that provide stability.

And former JMU wide receiver Landon Ellis has made that evident since the first whistle of spring practice.

“You constantly see Landon talking to other players, and he’s kind of being a second coach on the field,” Kennedy said. “You’re seeing them (JMU transfers) do a great job of coaching other players, and they’re not just concerned with themselves, they’re pouring into other people on the team again, which is only going to curve the learning curve and make it a bit faster.”

Kennedy added that when one of his players was unfamiliar with the new offense, Ellis, who knew the playbook lingo, helped direct the player to keep everyone on the same page.

Hitschler built on Kennedy’s anecdote of Ellis, adding that the JMU players’ familiarity with offensive and defensive schemes plays second fiddle to their knowledge of the team culture and standards that Chesney is attempting to establish.

“Anytime you start at a new place, you have to install a scheme, but you have to install belief,” Hitschler said. “When you bring kids who have lived through it and the success of the program, they can bring others with them. They can say, ‘No, this works, we got to do this,’ and it’s gone a long way to have that leadership in the room.”

Arguably more important than the continuity from the JMU transfers is the familiar faces among Chesney’s coaching staff.

The Bruin head honcho has emphasized alignment from the top down as an integral aspect of his program.

And bringing 10 coaches from JMU – including all three coordinators – is imperative for cultivating a foundation of alignment.

“When you have a staff together, everyone kind of understands the standards and expectations of what Coach Chesney is setting,” Kennedy said. “Coach Chesney, in terms of setting the culture, is the best in the business, and making sure that people believe in themselves. It obviously starts with him, and then it trickles down.”

While Kennedy and Hitschler both spent last season as Chesney’s offensive and defensive coordinators, respectively, the trio’s history together is much deeper than that.

Kennedy spent the last two seasons with Chesney, but also the two before that at Holy Cross as the head honcho’s quarterback coach and then-offensive coordinator at the FCS level.

Hitschler’s history with Chesney goes even further.

The Bruin defensive coordinator has been with Chensey at three different schools, first coaching together at Salve Regina – a Division III program – as a co-special teams coordinator and defensive line coach in 2011.

Fourteen years later, Hitschler returned to Chesney at JMU before coming over to Westwood with the UCLA head coach.

With a coaching partnership stretching across 15 years, Hitschler’s familiarity with Chesney allows the coaching staff to build cohesive foundations when leading a new team.

“He’s the same guy all the way back there (at Salve Regina),” Hitschler said. “It’s his enthusiasm, his excitement for the game, the energy that he brings daily. It’s unique and special, and it rubs off on the staff, and then the staff brings it to the players, and together, it’s a lot of fun out here. Everyone who’s around feels it. Eventually, that’s going to lead to wins.”

And when the new head coach is the same leader he was over a decade ago, the tenets and pillars Chesney is trying to establish become second nature for everyone on his staff.

Top-down alignment creates a stable foundation.

And players familiar with that foundation can help set the ground floor.