SMQB: My Patience With UCLA Football Is Being Slowly Chipped Away

Well, I don’t know what to say this morning.

If you’ve read Bruins Nation for any length of time, you know that it’s not often that I don’t have much to say. Maybe I do and I’m just not sure how I feel about things after the Chip Kelly era has started with a pair of consecutive losses.

I do know that I’ve got mixed feelings.

On one hand, like so many of you, I’m starting to question whether we were wrong for wanting Chip Kelly so badly. I’m growing more and more disillusioned with the UCLA Bruins offense with each possession.

For all the talk we heard from Chip Kelly about running an offense based on his available personnel, it just doesn’t feel like he’s doing that so far to this point. It feels more like he’s trying to fit a square peg through a round hole by running the ball as much as UCLA has.

On the other hand, I’m trying to be understanding and recognize that this is a young team that is starting a lot of freshmen.

I’m just tired of losing.

I want to start winning already.

On one hand, I feel like if the team played last week against it played Cincinnati the way it did yesterday, they probably would have beaten Cincinnati. At the same time, I’m concerned about some of the Mora era problems like penalties that reared their ugly heads yesterday.

It wasn’t the number of penalties, mind you. It was the type of penalties and the distance. The Bruins were penalized almost twice as many yards as the Oklahoma Sooners despite being called for the same number of penalties. That’s very concerning.

Another ugly Mora era habit that seems to be lingering is the propensity to try to arm tackle opponents. That’s concerning.

I’m incredibly concerned about the lack of scoring and the run/pass mix. I think that, by running the ball as much as UCLA has, the offense is shooting itself in the foot and killing offensive drives. When you run the ball on first down and have trouble gaining yardage, you’ve managed to make it that much harder to pick up a first down.

I just feel like we could have competed better in both games if our strategy didn’t seem so...stubborn.

All that said, I’m still willing to give Chip the benefit of the doubt right now.

But, with each loss, a little bit of that willingness is getting Chipped away, especially when I see that Herm Edwards has the Sun Devils at 2-0.


Go Bruins.