There’s going to come a time when the UCLA football team has a full complement of healthy players ““ when the team doesn’t have to go searching high and low for another defensive tackle to fill out the depth chart.
That time is not today. And it might not come this season. Brigham Harwell started the season at defensive tackle. He is out at least another week with a knee injury. Jess Ward filled in for Harwell before suffering a sprained knee against Cal and is out three to four weeks. Jerzy Siewierski has backed up at both defensive tackle positions, and he is nursing his own shoulder injury.
So going into Saturday’s game against Washington State, the Bruins are starting stalwart Kevin Brown, who has started every game this season, and true freshman Brian Price, who wasn’t even eligible for the first three games of the season.
“I’ve just been studying the playbook really hard,” Price said. “It’s been a bumpy road getting here. In the first place, getting to school. And then just learning the playbook. But they’ve been helping me a lot.”
Price was unable to play or practice for much of the early season due to an issue getting cleared by the NCAA clearinghouse. The defensive tackle was the best recruit in this year’s recruiting class.
His start against the Cougars on Saturday will be the first of his career. The Cougars run a spread formation, with three to four wide receivers in on every play, but Price doesn’t think it will be too different from playing against a more pro-style offense.
“It’s just football,” Price said. “I’ve just gotta do my job, and it shouldn’t be too different.”
Linebacker Reggie Carter, whose job might get a little harder if Price doesn’t live up to his billing along the defensive front, said that the lack of depth and inexperience on the line shouldn’t give the linebackers much more work.
“When someone gets hurt and someone has to step up, we expect the person behind them to play just as well as the person in front of them,” Carter said. “They have to step up their game. We’re counting on them, and we can’t baby them. They’re stepping in to play, and they have to play as the starter.”
Carter himself will probably see a little more playing time than usual against a spread offense with the loss of Christian Taylor. Taylor, the middle linebacker, is out with a concussion, and Carter and John Hale are expected to split time to a large extent at the linebacker spot against the spread formations. Because the Cougars play a lot of four wide receiver sets, the Bruins are going to try to match up their personnel against that “”mdash; meaning more defensive backs in the game and less linebackers.
Going into Pullman, one of the toughest road environments in the country, UCLA will be without much of its experience in the front seven of its defense.
INJURIES: Quarterback Pat Cowan sat out practice on Wednesday due to soreness. Coach Karl Dorrell said he could have practiced, but that they wanted to keep him out because his level of conditioning was not where the coaching staff wanted it to be … The Bruins piped in crowd noise for Wednesday’s practice, hoping to simulate the crowd noise they expect to face Saturday in Pullman. Unless the crowd noise in Pullman is coming strictly from one side of the field, however, the simulated noise might be ineffective. The only speaker was planted on the fence between Pauley Pavilion and Spaulding Field.