Three weekends ago, UCLA’s offense looked out of sorts.
Against an above-average Oregon Ducks defense, the Bruins were well behind the curve.
Under center, redshirt sophomore quarterback Brett Hundley looked anxious. He bounced in the pocket as he went through his progressions, settling for the short, safe route just about every time he had to make a read. With the Ducks defending, Hundley’s longest completion in a career-low 64-yard passing performance went for just 11 yards.
With a breeze of a win over Colorado and a tough, grind-it-out win over Arizona in the subsequent two weeks, however, Hundley and the Bruins regained their composure. Deep and intermediate routes injected life into what had previously been a boring and predictable offense. For the first time in a long time, the Bruins were dynamic.
To Hundley, though, it was all just part of a cyclical process; the stats didn’t tell a story about an offense that showed fundamental flaws or panic. Immediately following last week’s win over Washington, he said they didn’t tell a story at all.
“I just think, as an offense, you go through ups and downs, and that’s what I kept telling the team,” Hundley said. “Too many people were like, ‘Oh, you scored 14 points, you scored ten points.’ It’s not that two weeks will break a team. It will never break a team and it will never break an offense as long as we play this game for the right reasons.”
Even with just 159 passing yards against Washington, Hundley once again looked different in that he relaxed and didn’t try to do too much. In addition to developing timing with his receivers, quarterbacks coach Taylor Mazzone said this fluidity has been Hundley’s main focus in recent practices.
“We’ve gotten a little more individual time after practice and before practice to work on being a more fluid dropper,” Mazzone said. “He was getting a little robotic, so now we’ve made it more fluid, more natural, more athletic for him and it’s helped him a lot through his progression reads and setting his feet and making an accurate throw.”
No Love Lost
Upon scoring his third touchdown on Friday, Myles Jack was slapped with a 15-yard penalty for taunting after looking toward the Washington sideline and licking his gloved fingers.
After his first touchdown of the night, Jack likewise looked to the Washington bench and pointed, a gesture that did not draw a flag from the Pac-12 officiating crew.
Jack was recruited by Washington recruiting guru and defensive line coach Tosh Lupoi and even took an official visit in January, but signed with UCLA in June.
When asked if there was any existing animosity between him and Washington, Jack said, “I don’t know how to answer that correctly, but yeah, I guess you could say the feeling is mutual between us”.
Graduation Day
This Saturday’s game against Arizona State will bring the 2013 season’s Senior Day, in which the Bruins will honor their seniors before the final home game on their schedule.
On Tuesday, coach Jim Mora said that the list of graduating seniors has grown by three. Redshirt juniors Luke Gane, a fullback, Brandon Willis, an offensive/defensive lineman and Aramide Olaniyan, a linebacker and special teams mainstay, have told coaches they intend to graduate. Each had one year of eligibility remaining after this season.
“They’re all going to graduate, which is fantastic. They’re all going to move on in their lives and we’ll miss them,” Mora said. “I think they’ve made decisions it’s time to move on in their life and we’re going to be pulling for them and helping them in any way we can.”