UCLA football fell to 0-3 through the first quarter of their first season under Chip Kelly. Here are three takeaways from the big Fresno State win over the Bruins.
For the first time since 1971, the UCLA Bruins are 0-3 to start a season. After losses to Cincinnati and No. 6 Oklahoma, the Bruins followed that up with a home date against defending MWC West champion Fresno State.
Last year, Fresno State was going through its own transition as former Cal coach Jeff Tedford took over the Bulldogs. The coaching transition immediately restored stability in Fresno, and the Bulldogs ran to the division title and won one of their two games against rival Boise State. Now in their second season under Tedford, Fresno State is hoping to once again contend for the Mountain West title.
Getting a statement win over a Pac-12 opponent will go a long way toward boosting Fresno State’s national profile. It will have limited impact, though, considering just how bad UCLA has been to start the season. We did not learn things this week so much as have things we’d already learned over the first two weeks reinforced by the most recent performance.
With that in mind, let’s look at what we can glean from the 38-14 defeat sustained by UCLA against a Group of Five opponent at the Rose Bowl in #Pac12AfterDark action.
1. Dorian Thompson-Robinson remains a work in progress at quarterback
Dorian Thompson-Robinson may very well develop into Chip Kelly’s next great quarterback. He won at Oregon with Dennis Dixon and Darron Thomas, and Thompson-Robinson is a better raw talent than either of those two players. But the true freshman from Las Vegas is also incredibly raw, as he showed against the Bulldogs on Saturday night.
Thompson-Robinson completed 10 of his 24 passing attempts for 151 yards, throwing one touchdown pass but two interceptions in the bargain. The freshman passer also contributed 49 yards on eight carries, including the longest run of the night for the Bruins on a 16-yard burst.
It was an interesting turnaround in both his passing and rushing results. The first two weeks of the year, Thompson-Robinson managed to complete at least 60 percent of his passes but was held to negative net yardage on the ground.
The young quarterback finally found some productivity with his legs just as he was melting under the pressure of the Fresno State defense in his third career college start. There are still a lot of games left for Thompson-Robinson to play in his career at UCLA, but he needs to find a way to put together all his skills in the same contest for the Bruins to start winning.
2. The UCLA run game is still inconsistent in Chip Kelly’s system
With the hire of Chip Kelly, the expectation was that the running game was going to transform for the better after years of ineptitude under Jim Mora. The Bruins have regularly struggled when they keep the ball on the ground. Unfortunately, this hasn’t changed in the first quarter of the season under Kelly.
Against a Fresno State team that gave up 117 yards per game in their first two outings, UCLA barely broke that mark against the Mountain West defense with 119 rushing yards as a team. The Bulldogs gave up no carries longer than 16 yards, as the Bruins were forced to chip away all game long on the ground. They were ultimately led by quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson in rushing.
That proved costly, as Kelly’s offense struggled to keep the chains moving. With an ineffective ground game, the Bruins went just 1-of-10 on third downs. They did manage to convert two of their three fourth-down tries, but they were unable to keep drives going throughout the night.
It was an ugly result for a coach that is considered an offensive guru, especially when it comes to installing a plan for a high-powered rushing attack. Much as they did during the Mora era, the UCLA backfield was unable to find any consistency against an opponent who won the battle in the trenches.
3. There is no shame in losing to Fresno State in 2018 for the Bruins
As the defending MWC West champions, Fresno State came into 2018 as a team to watch in the Group of Five race. The Bulldogs had this game marked on their calendar as a place to make a clear statement to the College Football Playoff selection committee. They nearly took down Minnesota on the road in Week 2, losing 21-14 in Minneapolis, and it seemed only a matter of time before they would get a landmark result for this current vintage.
Marcus McMaryion, originally an Oregon State recruit, played spectacular football against UCLA. The Bruins gave up 270 yards and a touchdown through the air on 22-of-33 passing to McMaryion, and the Fresno State quarterback added 16 yards and four rushing touchdowns to pace the blowout.
Fresno State’s defense came up big as well, holding UCLA to 270 total yards of offense. It was no fluke, as they entered the game ranked in the top 40 in total defense, scoring defense, and defense against both the run and the pass. They added two more interceptions, bringing their season mark to seven through three games.
UCLA will look back at this game at the end of the season, and it will hardly be the most embarrassing loss endured by the Bruins. It is going to be a long season as a young team goes through the growing pains of adjusting to the speed of the college game and to a new coaching staff. The Bruins are going to continue to get worse before they can finally begin to get better under Chip Kelly.