There’s a chance that a week from today, UCLA football coach Karl Dorrell might be fired.
There’s also a chance that, with a victory next Saturday over USC, and an Arizona State loss to Arizona, UCLA could be headed for the Rose Bowl as the Pac-10 champions.
There might even be a chance that both things happen.
Thanks to UCLA’s improbable 16-0 victory over Oregon on Saturday, the Bruins are in position to finish the regular season 7-5 and still have a chance to go to the Rose Bowl, their stated goal since the beginning of the season.
And for the record, black is white, up is down, and short is long.
“Our goal was to be in a position for this opportunity,” Dorrell said. “I can’t tell you that I thought we’d be 6-5 with this opportunity. But it is what it is.”
The season began with high expectations, as the Bruins rose as high as No. 11 in them national rankings before falling to Utah, 44-6. There was even talk of getting to the national championship game.
Now at 6-5, the Bruins are still in position to get to a BCS bowl if things break their way. If they had beaten ASU last week instead of losing 24-20, they would be in the Pac-10 driver’s seat right now, needing only to defeat USC to clinch the conference title.
“You wouldn’t think it, right?” linebacker Christian Taylor said. “We’re 5-5 coming into this game and it was all bad, and yeah, I mean it’s crazy. We don’t have control over it anymore. All we can do is play our game. It’s been a very strange season and it hasn’t gone the way we wanted it to go. We were hoping to be in the Rose Bowl the whole time, if not a chance at the (national championship game). (But) it’s great to sit here right now and have the chance.”
And all thanks to a victory over a rudderless Oregon team.
Coming into the game at No. 9 in the country, the Ducks didn’t come close to playing up to that ranking due to the loss of quarterback Dennis Dixon, who left last week’s loss to Arizona with a torn ACL. Without the mobile Dixon, the Ducks offense struggled mightily.
Oregon was able to hang in the game for the most part, however, thanks to UCLA’s own quarterbacking issues and questionable offensive play calling.
Osaar Rashaan went 0-7 on pass attempts in the first half before being pulled in favor of Ben Olson. The Bruin coaching staff didn’t seem to make a very strong attempt to play to Rashaan’s strengths. Instead of putting him on the move and rolling him out to throw to utilize his speed and athleticism, the Bruin coaching staff tried to drop Rashaan back as a more traditional pocket passer, and the results were abysmal.
UCLA had just 40 yards of offense at the half, and Rashaan was only rolled out once ““ a play which resulted in an 11-yard rushing gain, and one of UCLA’s two first downs in the first half.
After Rashaan’s shaky play, Dorrell went with Olson to start the second half and the offense smoothed out, to an extent.
“(Olson) felt comfortable in the pre-game,” Dorrell said. “Osaar struggled in the first half and we felt it was a good time to insert Ben for a series in the second half. He looked good and engineered a couple of drives. Ben got more comfortable as he was playing.”
UCLA’s defense, for their part, handled the struggling Ducks attack easily. They knocked out two of the Ducks quarterbacks, Brady Leaf and Cody Kempt, and managed to contain running back Jonathan Stewart, limiting him to 33 yards on 13 carries.
But while the defense kept the Bruins in the game, it was special teams that won it.
Kai Forbath nailed three field goals, the first one from 54 yards out. Forbath was just a few yards short of the all-time UCLA record and, given how easily he cleared the crossbar, would have liked to have had a shot from a few yards back.
“I was very pumped (when I found out how far back it was),” the freshman kicker said. “I was hoping it was a couple of yards further back for the record. The record’s 56. My kicking coach is (former UCLA kicker) Chris Sailer, and it’s his record.”
Punter Aaron Perez also continued his strong play, averaging 46.4 yards on 10 punts, including four which pinned Oregon inside their 20-yard line.
Punt returner Terrence Austin also did his best to give the struggling Bruin offense good field position, and at one point, he had his helmet knocked clean off because he did not fair catch a ball with a defender bearing down on him.
“Those hits I took, they were some good ones,” Austin said. “They looked like they were trying to kick it to me most of the time, so I was just trying to keep that field position alive. I didn’t want to keep the offense in a bad situation because this was a game we needed good field position in.”