Thomas Duarte squinted into the sun as he stepped amid a huddle of reporters after Thursday morning’s practice, multiple cameras aimed at him.
“Woah, I’m in the spotlight,” Duarte said.
After a standout freshman season last year, in the spotlight is likely where the sophomore Y receiver will remain for the rest of his career.
Duarte finished his first year with 214 yards and three touchdowns, coming on strong at the end of the season and showing a maturity that caught his coach’s attention.
“We actually did kinda see it right away,” said coach Jim Mora. “It didn’t seem like he struggled mentally like some kids do either with the playbook or the level of play.”
But truthfully, Duarte admitted to a level of anxiety early in his career that he kept well hidden from Mora and his teammates, not wanting his moments of panic to disrupt play and hurt his team.
“Being a freshman last year, I didn’t really know what to expect,” Duarte said. “Going into these big games on the road, you’re nervous. (It’s) nerve-wracking, you just kinda didn’t want to make a mistake.”
But it was these big games that were the turning point for Duarte, when he noticed things began to click for him and the nerves began to abate. Mora and his coaching staff took note of Duarte’s improvements before these games and doled out more responsibility to him on the field. Feeling the confidence his coaches and then-redshirt sophomore quarterback Brett Hundley had in him pushed Duarte to step up his game and meet their expectations.
Then-redshirt senior Y receivers Darius Bell and Grayson Mazzone helped Duarte reach that next level, handing out advice throughout the season.
Now, as an experienced Y receiver taking their place atop the depth chart, Duarte is also assuming their role as mentors, passing his knowledge down to the players new to the position such as freshman receiver Mossi Johnson and redshirt junior Tyler Scott.
Duarte’s biggest advice to his new mentees, which is also an adjustment he’s hoping to make this year, is simple: just be patient.
“Patience on my routes, kinda not panicking really,” Duarte said. “A guy jams you at the line, you get panicked, you’re frantic, you’re thinking, ‘I gotta get open,’ but … the case is Brett’s still making his reads, so you just need patience really.”
Duarte didn’t need to wait patiently for his chance, though.
After working his way into the spotlight late last season, Duarte’s growth since then seems to point toward him shining even brighter this time around.
“I’ve grasped a whole different concept of the game,” Duarte said. “Just the experience I’ve got from last year and the coaching I’ve got throughout the whole year … this might be the year.”
Season’s greeting
In its third-to-last day of fall camp, UCLA began to make the switch to season mode with its practice routine, adding a scout-team portion to its list of drills. Mora said this preliminary service team work was more of a trial run for the players to get familiar with how the process will work during the season than preparation for its first opponent, Virginia.
However, as the team splits between the normal squad and the scout team, decisions on which players to redshirt come into play. Mora said he was heading to a meeting with his coaching staff right after Thursday morning’s practice to make an initial plan regarding redshirting decisions.
“We don’t really think about guys we want to redshirt, we think about guys that we want to play that can help us win and the result of that is some guys will redshirt,” Mora said. “But we don’t go, ‘Hey let’s redshirt this guy and save him.’ That’s not our mindset and never will be I hope.”
While he wasn’t sure if either of the two freshman running backs, Adarius Pickett and Nathan Starks, would redshirt the year, Mora was more certain on the fate of UCLA’s three freshman defensive linemen – Ainuu Taua, Matt Dickerson and Jacob Tuioti-Mariner – saying he expects all three to play this season and contribute.
College Football Playoff
Former UCLA coach and current Pac-12 Networks analyst Rick Neuheisel attended UCLA’s practice Thursday with the Pac-12 Networks and discussed his thoughts on the new College Football Playoff system, which will take effect this season.
The playoff will consist of four teams chosen by a 13-person committee. The winner of the four-team playoff will be the national champion.
Despite claiming that the Pac-12 was the nation’s top conference, Neuheisel was candid in his concerns about the conference’s chances of being among those final four teams.
“In an era now where there’s only four spots to play for a national championship and five major conferences … one conference champion will be left out and I’m concerned that because of the great quarterbacking in this conference and the fact that (the Pac-12) is the only conference with nine conference games and a championship game, that there are too many bullets to be dodged to get to the final unscathed,” Neuheisel said.
Neuheisel described the difficulty of the Pac-12 schedule as “murderer’s row,” and contrasted it with other conferences such as the SEC, which plays only eight conference games, with some SEC teams scheduling games against weaker, non-Division-I opponents in the middle of the year. He also expressed some doubts that a two-loss Pac-12 team would be among the top four teams if there was a one-loss team in another conference.
“My concern outwardly … is that the committee of 13, especially in year one is gonna want to be really politically correct and not … leave a one-loss team out and supplant them with a two-loss team,” Neuheisel said. “I worry about that, even though I think it would absolutely be the right thing to do.”
The Pac-12 opens the season with six teams in the AP Top 25, and one team – Oregon – in the top four, sitting at No. 3.