Part of the UCLA plan for Saturday’s game at BYU was to have its top defensive back, junior Alterraun Verner, shadow BYU’s top receiver, Austin Collie.
Very little of that plan worked, as the Bruins slipped badly and lost 59-0, but Verner’s struggle against Collie was especially surprising.
Collie saw the cushion Verner was allowing and took advantage early, catching three passes on BYU’s first drive, which ended with a touchdown. Then at the start of the second quarter, Collie raced past Verner in a one-on-one matchup to catch a 37-yard pass from junior Max Hall. Collie finished his day with 10 catches, 110 yards and two touchdowns.
"It was a shocker," UCLA defensive coordinator DeWayne Walker said. "I thought he could handle Collie, that was our whole game plan, and it did not work out that way."
Collie had torched UCLA before. When the two teams met last year in the Las Vegas Bowl, Collie caught six passes for 107 yards and one touchdown. He also had 79 yards and two touchdowns when the teams met at the beginning of the 2007 season, a matchup UCLA won 27-17.
"Last time I went up against their secondary, they had some talented guys," Collie said, adding that he was matched against UCLA’s Trey Brown last season. "They do have talented guys now, but I think the preparation that we had this week was a little bit better than theirs."
Verner said there were things he saw from the BYU receivers that he did not expect to see. At times, when he made incorrect reads, Verner was out of position. But BYU quarterback Max Hall’s accuracy was another important factor – he completed almost 80 percent of his passes.
"Hall put the ball on the money on almost every single pass," Verner said.
The combination of Hall’s accuracy and the BYU scheme was lethal to the Bruins. Mostly, Hall found his receivers on shorter routes and swing passes. All those short passes are part of the reason that Verner finished the game with 13 tackles, a career-high. But Hall also threw down field with success. It was a slightly different offense than the one UCLA faced twice last season and studied over the past two weeks.
"A few things that I saw I said to myself, ‘I haven’t really seen that before,’" UCLA safety Rahim Moore said. "And a lot of us felt the same way."
Walker said he would meet with Verner this week.
"I need to sit him down and find out what was going on mentally," Walker said. "We’ve got to get his confidence back."
Verner said he didn’t think the performance would be a setback for him.
"We didn’t play well," he said. "We all know that. We can all make more plays. We can all do this and that. We have to forget about it though. We just have to go correct it and play a lot better against Arizona.
"Nobody is going to have an emotional let-down because we all have each other’s back. … We will bounce back. We’re going to have a good game next week."
ANOTHER BLOCKED KICK: There were a lot of mistakes for UCLA on Saturday, but the most frustrating one may have been kicker Kai Forbath’s blocked field goal try in the second quarter.
The Bruins trailed 35-0 and were in desperate need of points when Forbath lined up the 49-yard kick. The team surely remembered the heartbreaking loss last year against BYU in the Las Vegas Bowl, when the Cougars won 17-16 after blocking a last-minute field goal. And they knew that BYU is very good at blocking kicks – the Cougars blocked an extra point in their last game to beat Washington, 28-27.
Still the Cougars blocked another one. Defensive tackle Russell Tialavea got a hand up and blocked the kick, and defensive back David Tafuna scooped it up for the Cougars. That set up BYU’s sixth touchdown of the first half and thwarted one of the Bruins’ best chances to score.
"Obviously BYU is good at it, and we knew they were good at it," coach Rick Neuheisel said. "It looked to me like it was a low kick."
Holder Aaron Perez also said he thought the kick was a little low but couldn’t be sure until he watched the tape.
Perez echoed the sentiment of the rest of the team when he said that the mistake was something the Bruins would learn from and correct in time for the conference season.
"A good team like BYU will come after every kick," Perez said. "We just didn’t execute. We do it 10 times out of 10 usually. We’ll look at it in film, and it won’t happen again."
INJURY REPORT: The costliest of the Bruins’ injuries Saturday came at the start of the third quarter when center Micah Reed hurt his knee. Reed, who is a senior, was one of the most experienced of the Bruins on the offensive line. He was replaced by backup Jake Dean, who had never played in a game before.
UCLA said that Reed had sprained his right MCL and that he would have an MRI in the next two days.
Other injuries for the Bruins included running back Raymond Carter’s bruised knee, running back Aundre Dean’s sprained ankle, linebacker Kyle Bosworth’s sprained left MCL and defensive tackle Jerzy Siewierski’s sprained neck.