It's not the X's and O's, It's the Jimmies and Joes

How many teams win games with the amount of youth and inexperience we have? It’s also very difficult to improve when you don’t have the depth up and down your roster, so you don’t have the talent and maturity to compete against in practice every day. This isn’t to say the coaches have done the world’s greatest job, but this lies more on the players than anyone else and since the players are giving their all, it’s just the talent in the upperclassmen that is lacking, this lies on the previous regime.

Poor athletes + poor coaching = terrible
Great athletes + poor coaching = average, you will beat most of the teams you “should” beat because of your talent advantage (ie, see teams that trample over their conference and mid-major OOC games and then fall flat in bowl games against well-coached teams)
Poor athletes + great coaching = above average, you will beat the teams you “should” beat as well as some you “should not” beat
Great athletes + great coaching = you will do well

I think you need to look at the coaches for heavily penalized teams, especially if it’s stuff like false starts and offsides that is 100% avoidable. Players that commit things like holding or blocking penalties are often using poor technique and footwork, or are tired and then regressing to poor technique – coach should be responsible for both. Same for players that miss tackles, they are either not practicing proper technique and leverage or are just tired and trying to dive or arm tackle. Players that drop passes may not be using proper technique as well – after hearing the comment that these guys are able to make the catches in practice, makes me believe that it’s a technique issue as well – under the lights on gameday, when the pressure is on and you struggle to concentrate you will regress to poor technique unless you have been well-coached and the correct arm extension, focus, and looking the ball into your hands is ingrained into your mind through repetition in practice. Coughing up the football is definitely a technique issue – players who rarely fumble know how to carry the ball and do not get careless, this is something that needs to be stressed on the practice field as well.

I think UCLA has plenty of talent. I don’t pay attention to the recruiting rankings but our players do not look any smaller, slower, or weaker than the guys on the other sideline. I have yet to see a game where we get physically dominated. If you want to call out our guys for not being able to get off blocks, I think that that is also a technique issue, it is one of the four fundamental defensive skills. I don’t think that any of our guys would have been recruited to play D-I football at a Pac-10 school if they did not have physical talent – it’s a matter of being able to use that talent. I think that all the mistakes are fixable, there are no physical limitations. If you are physically able to make the play, then the only roadblock is mental – technique, footwork, angles, and movements that are installed by the coaches.