Since the UCLA football team began its fall training camp at the start of this month, we’ve been hearing about all these new features of the Bruins’ offense.
There’s a new element of speed at the skill positions; there’s new size on the offensive line; there’s Kevin Prince, a new talent at the quarterback position.
And yet Saturday’s scrimmage felt much like the old, slow Bruin offenses of the past two seasons.
Sure, there were small glimpses of change. Redshirt freshman tailback Johnathan Franklin exploded for a 60-yard touchdown run, and freshman speedster Damien Thigpen raced a punt back for a score. But the real substance of this scrimmage was pretty familiar. The first-team defense simply dominated the first-team offense. UCLA quarterbacks struggled to complete passes downfield. And, just like last year’s scrimmage, the evening ended with coach Rick Neuheisel talking about how much work still needed to be done to improve the UCLA offense.
There’s one easy explanation: The defense has inherent advantages in these scrimmages. The defensive players already understand the offense’s primary scheme because they see it each day in practice. Moreover, there is much more experience and savvy on the UCLA defense than on its offense, which features so many of those new faces.
But the offense should still be able to challenge the first team defense, and that didn’t really happen.
Prince played poorly. The redshirt freshman who will start at quarterback hit only nine of his 19 passing attempts. He had an early interception but no touchdowns. He did not complete a deep ball and threw mostly to tailbacks and tight ends in the flat. Prince said he felt like he was rushing his reads a little bit, missing open routes. Overall, it was a subpar night, he said.
Neuheisel called it “freshmanitis.”
Offensive coordinator Norm Chow offered a similar evaluation of the offensive line, saying afterward that he was disappointed in the unit’s performance. All those new additions to the line ““ freshmen Stanley Hasiak and Xavier Su’a-Filo and transfers Kai Maiava and Eddie Williams ““ didn’t exactly shine. The line could do nothing to stop defensive tackle Brian Price, who looked like a man among boys in the first half of the scrimmage when he had two tackles for loss, a sack and a pass deflection.
There were other disappointing moments for the Bruin offense. New tailback Christian Ramirez has the top spot on the UCLA depth chart, but he’s been hampered by injury this fall. He sprained an ankle Saturday and gained no yards.
And freshman wide receiver Randall Carroll, the California state 100m track champion who has received plenty of hype since he arrived in Westwood, dropped what should have been an easy catch. Carroll was playing with the first team because starting wide receiver Terrence Austin could not play. Austin was the best man at his brother’s wedding Saturday, Neuheisel said.
For the most part, these are little things. As Prince said, its the small “screw-ups” that lead to much larger problems for the offense. But, just like last year, these little things are producing a lot of uncertainty for Bruin fans.
The defense looks great, good enough to be one of the best in the Pac-10. The offense looks mediocre, certainly not of the high-caliber that elite Pac-10 teams like Cal, Oregon and USC will surely field.
So is the glass half full, or is it half empty?
It’s probably still too early to tell. Like I said, the scrimmage doesn’t truly simulate a game, and there are disadvantages for the offense.
The better question is will all the new changes to the offense be apparent Sept. 5, when UCLA opens its season against San Diego State?
We’ll know the answer in 12 days.