Thanks to Ryan Kartje of the OC Register for posting these videos.
Coach Mora didn't say a whole lot during his post-game press conference. While he talked about the loss being on everyone, he said that he would have to review the film to determine what was responsible for each of the ten sacks. His most notable quote came at the very end:
I was hoping we'd make it. I thought that 50 yards is a makeable kick. So, you've got to make those. We've got to do better. Like I said, it's all phases. It's not one play. Unfortunately, it came down to that one play. But there are a lot of plays that led up to that one play.
Ka'imi Fairbairn is 0 for 3 now from 50+ yards and that doesn't include the 55-yard attempt that was negated by the penalty. He is now 8 for 18 over 40 yards. That's only 44%. So, statistically speaking, a 50-yard attempt does not appear to be "makeable" for a kicker whose career long is 48 yards.
I want to know why no one bothered to ask why they didn't try throwing one deep on the final drive. It seems to me that, given the Fuller and Massington passes, it would have been more likely that one of our receivers could have burned the coverage rather than trying a 50 yard field goal.
Brett's key quote was an answer to Ryan Kartje's question about whether he thought they should have tried a Hail Mary:
It was a thought and we plan for that. But, when you have 40 seconds left, 50 seconds left, I trust our offense. We were able to move the ball down and get us in position to have an opportunity to win the game. All we really needed to do was get in field goal range. Just give ourselves an opportunity to win the game and that's what we did.
While that may certainly be true, the fact remains that, to truly be in field goal range, they needed another 16 yards. Fairbairn is 12 of 17 in his career on attempts between 30 and 39 yards. That's 70%. If his career long is 48 and his season long is 47, then trying a 55-yard field goal is NOT in "field goal range". When you have the opportunity for one untimed down and you choose a 50-yard field goal attempt which is STILL not in range, that's just poor decision making on the part of the coaching staff.
Here are the key things Jake said:
We pretty much knew what they were going to do....There wasn't so much schemes so much as we just didn't take care of our jobs....A sack is always going to represent the offensive line, no matter where it comes from. That's just the nature of the beast. At the same time, we just have to come back and make sure we do correct those mistakes that we made because if we keep doing the same things over and over again, it's something we can't tolerate.
Well, yeah, but the question becomes "What happens when our offensive line does keep making those mistakes, game after game and season after season?" Who should be held accountable at that point? Is it the players? Or, maybe it's just bad coaching coming from our offensive line coach Adrian Klemm who is getting paid $500,000 a year? You can recruit the best athletes in the world, but, if you can't coach them to perform, having the best athletes doesn't mean jack. There needs to be accountability for the continued lack of performance by the offensive line.
So what did Coach Klemm have to say about the performance of his offensive line last night?
UCLA offensive line coach Adrian Klemm was not made available after the game.
— Ryan Kartje (@Ryan_Kartje) October 5, 2014
It figures. Apparently, neither was Coach Mazzne. Yes, he lost the O's in his name again after last night because his playcalling was atrocious. The fact that it took until the fourth quarter to open up the playbook with the long passes to Fuller and Massington is embarrassing. Maybe if he had done so earlier, we would have put up enough points and not needed to try two desperate field goal attempts that we had zero chance of making.
Defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich wasn't making any excuses when he said:
Great defenses gotta stop the run when you know they're gonna run and we knew they were gonna run and we didn't.
You can say that again. But that wasn't Ulbrich's most honest comparison of how both teams played.
They played better than us today which is very unfortunate considering the circumstances that we were in.
That is the understatement of the year.