Football’s first Pac-12 win comes littered with penalties

With just under two minutes left to play in Thursday’s game, Utah faced a do-or-die, fourth-and-11 gamble.

A split second after the ball was snapped, freshman defensive lineman Eddie Vanderdoes plowed into Utah quarterback Travis Wilson, turning the ball over on downs and handing the Bruins their first Pac-12 win of the season.

Then came the yellow laundry.

An offside call on senior outside linebacker Anthony Barr took UCLA out of a victory formation and into an urgent defensive situation. The Utes capitalized off Barr’s mistake, converting a more manageable fourth-and-six to keep the drive alive.

Utah strung UCLA’s defensive blunder all the way out to the 23-yard line, where a Travis Wilson interception gave the Bruins the same result they intended to earn seven plays earlier.

Of UCLA’s 13 penalties – which cost the Bruins 100 yards of field position over the course of the game – coach Jim Mora said there were four he considered to be “game-changers.” Flags like Barr’s in the fourth quarter or a false start by freshman right guard Alex Redmond in the third quarter, or what Mora calls “unforced errors,” are all faults the Bruins will have to patch up with the meat of their tough conference schedule approaching.

“Sometimes it’s being overeager, sometimes it’s a momentary lack of focus and you get beat, and instead of moving your feet, you grab,” said Mora of the easy penalties. “It’s all sorts of different things. It’s not one particular issue, so we’re working on it.”

Because of how fast the Bruin defense prefers to play, Barr said it’s understandable that the starting 11 will rack up a personal foul or two, penalties indicative of playing with aggressiveness. It’s the ‘no-brainers’ like his offside Thursday, he said, that require immediate fixing.

“The aggressive penalties, they’re OK, I think,” Barr said. “That’s something we can live with, but it’s the mental ones … that hurt us the most. On first and 15 (on offense) and first and five (on defense), it’s difficult to win games and I think we have to correct it. How we do that is focus.”

Through four games, the Bruins have the highest number of penalties per game of any team in the NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision and rank third in total penalty yardage with 357 yards surrendered. Their opponents have committed less than half as many penalties for just 185 yards.

While that disparity hasn’t made an impact on UCLA’s spotless record, it points to several drives that have been ruined by penalties, particularly once fatigue starts to set in, keeping scores close late in games.

“When you get tired on the offensive line, especially when you’re in a tempo offense, you have to be mentally tuned in the whole time,” said left guard Xavier Su’a-Filo. “You can’t afford those little penalties, especially in the red zone. “

For Mora, lowering the penalty total is an ongoing process that cannot be fixed overnight. For him, it remains an irritant that the Bruins can’t shake just yet.

“I don’t think it’s a lack of effort or that they don’t care,” Mora said. “It’s just for some reason I’m not able to get it fixed yet. I’m working hard at it, though.”

 

Night Moves

While UCLA played at Nebraska in a nationally televised day game on ABC in September, the rest of the Bruins’ four contests have been at night.

Even after competing in a Thursday night game at Utah broadcast on Fox Sports 1, a Friday night home game against Washington on ESPN2 still waits just over a month in the distance.

When asked about prevalent late and non-Saturday Pac-12 games this past Thursday, Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott was blunt but understanding of the games’ impact on schools.

“The truth is that they rate well. We get a lot of attention because there’s not a lot else going on,” Scott said. “We’re very mindful among all of our campuses to spread it because we realize it’s a burden.”