Each of the player biographies in the 2010 UCLA football media guide starts with a projection for the coming year. They read like job descriptions for the young athletes and Richard Brehaut’s is no different.
Nestled below some key facts about the 6-foot-2-inch sophomore from Alta Loma, the blurb reads:
“Richard figures to add depth at the quarterback position and can step in for Kevin Prince when needed.”
Well, Richard, you’re really needed now.
On Oct. 23, Prince went into surgery to determine what was wrong with the sore right knee that had been bothering him for more than a month. When he came out, the news wasn’t good. His season was over.
Brehaut’s season, however, is just about to begin all over again. UCLA (3-4, 1-3 Pac-10), coming off of two blowout conference losses on the road, will face No. 15 Arizona at the Rose Bowl on Saturday. The Bruins are starved for wins, but those are hard to comeby when you are ranked last in the Pac-10 in both passing offense and total offense.
Brehaut has inherited a mandate for change. That said, offensive coordinator Norm Chow was clear about his expectations for him.
“He can’t be a rookie anymore,” Chow said.
Brehaut couldn’t agree more.
“Quarterbacks need to be the leaders of the team,” he said. “Now that Kevin’s gone, I need to step up that much more.”
Having already started two games for UCLA, Brehaut has more experience than your average backup. But he, like everyone else, has had to watch week by week to see if his friend and teammate, Prince, would be healthy enough to take his place behind center.
The days of waiting are officially over.
“Up to this point in my career, I’ve been battling for reps, sharing reps with guys,” Brehaut said. “Now that it’s my team, it’s really upon myself to take us to that next level and be that guy.”
Prince used to be that guy.
Prince was supposed to be the future, the gem of the new pistol offense, developed for a quarterback with his kind of mobility. As a redshirt sophomore this year, Prince was chosen as team captain, an honor bestowed upon him by a vote of his fellow players.
But Prince was nowhere to be found on the practice field this week. Instead, he was home recuperating from surgery. His teammates, especially his replacement, could feel his absence, though.
“It feels really different in the meeting room with Kevin not sitting next to me,” Brehaut said. “I mean, he’s not out here, we’re not talking over stuff.”
Prince first hurt his knee on Sept. 25 in UCLA’ s win over Texas and, since then, was plagued by soreness and swelling, but he did his best to downplay how it might be affecting him.
That’s not something that surprises Prince’s best friend and high school teammate, UCLA redshirt sophomore tight end Joe Fauria.
“He’s one of the toughest guys I know,” Fauria said. “Since high school, he’s gotten hurt before and played through it without saying a word.”
Prince sat out the first game after the injury, a UCLA win over Washington State, but played nearly all of the snaps in UCLA’s 35-7 loss to California. Practices were just as hit or miss. Sometimes, Prince was out there throwing passes and going through the motions with the first-team offense, but other days, he spent practice off to the side, watching Brehaut take his reps.
Two MRI tests Prince took during that time were inconclusive, which is why the exploratory arthroscopic surgery became necessary. When the doctors got inside his knee, though, they found they had to repair the meniscus and perform a microfracture procedure, which helps to grow new cartilage, but can take much longer for recovery.
Prince had been projected to miss a couple of weeks, but it is now clear that he will have to wait until the spring to rejoin his team on the field.
“He’s been a valiant performer,” coach Rick Neuheisel said. “He’s not played a lot of games healthy. I admire the way he’s dealt with it, both the good and the bad.”
And that means something to his teammates, too.
“I look up to him; the guys look up to him,” Fauria said. “That’s another role that Richard will have to fulfill, too, and he’s going to do fine.”
Prince won the Bruins’ starting quarterback job in the team’s 2009 spring camp. Back then, a 17-year-old Brehaut had just graduated early from high school so that he could join his new college teammates and get a head start on learning how to play with the big boys.
Brehaut has done a lot more learning since then, but as the starting quarterback for the rest of the season, he’s still got plenty of work to do.
“He’s getting there,” Neuheisel said. “He’s getting better. Each and every week, he takes another step forward, but (there is) still lots of room for improvement. Hopefully, he’ll be a week better this week.”
UCLA fans would hope so after Brehaut and the Bruins were demolished by Oregon Oct. 21, 60-13.
Neuheisel had once again waited until the last minute to cross out Prince’s name and give Brehaut the ball. After marching down to Oregon’s 30-yard line on the first possession, Brehaut threw an errant pass that was picked off by the Ducks, who used an explosive offense to score on that drive and many others as the night wore on.
Despite the outcome, the game actually produced UCLA’s best passing numbers of the season with Brehaut throwing 16 completions in 23 tries for 159 yards. Those statistics were skewed, however, by the Bruins’ long time of possession, which still only resulted in a single touchdown.
After the game, Brehaut was apologetic for turning the ball over ““ he also lost two fumbles in the game ““ and vowed to keep improving.
But Brehaut was just as concerned with completing passes as he was with the other important duty of the quarterback: being the team’s commanding officer on the field.
“I want to be the leader that guys can look up to and can look at when times maybe aren’t going so well,” he said. “I want to be there to pick guys up, keep guys in the game, keep everyone’s concentration level up.”
With five games left on the schedule, every game is critical for the Bruins if they want to try to salvage their season. Brehaut’s task, in particular, is a big one considering UCLA struggled to get the passing game going even with Prince in the lineup.
Brehaut is not the same player who entered training camp figuring to add depth to the roster, but that development is just par for the course, according to Chow.
“That’s what you expect out of a guy,” Chow said. “That’s the normal progression. If he wants to be the quarterback around here for the next couple of years, then he’d better do that and I think he understands that.”
Once he found out his season was over, Prince offered words of encouragement to his only slightly younger counterpart.
“He just said that it’s my team now,” said Brehaut, who ““ ready or not ““ now holds the reins to just about the bumpiest ride a 19-year-old can get his hands on: an unpredictable college football team’s season.