UCLA Football was once again brutalized in another loss to Stanford last night, once again proving that the Bruins are not ready to make the jump to elite status.
For some reason, when I woke up this morning, I had the lyrics to Prince’s “1999” in my head. It did not make sense at first, but then I wiped the sleep from my eyes and analyzed the words of the first verse that was haunting my skull.
"Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you/ I only want you to have some fun/ I was dreaming when I wrote this/ Forgive me if it goes astray/ But when I woke up this morning/ Could have sworn it was judgment day/ The sky was all purple, there were people running everywhere/ Trying to run from the destruction/ You know I didn’t even care"
How awkwardly appropriate, especially those last two lines. UCLA Football got destroyed last night, and I don’t care. Creepy, right?
Okay, that’s not true. I care a lot, which is why I am writing this now. I had high hopes for the Bruins this season, but right now, UCLA Football, with a 56-35 loss to Stanford, is not ready for the big time (which I believed they were) and it seems things are falling apart.
UCLA Bruins
There are so many themes going on with UCLA right now, which Go Joe Bruin will get to in the following days, so for now I will just stick with the fact that Jim Mora and the Bruins came up against another huge challenge and once again failed to meet expectations.
This is the eighth time the Bruins have lost to the Cardinal. They did not just lose, they were unprepared (coming off a bye week), they were mentally undisciplined and (though not their fault) were once again hampered by an unbeleivable amount of injuries.
Sep 19, 2015; Pasadena, CA, USA; UCLA Bruins head coach Jim Mora during the fourth quarter of the game against the Brigham Young Cougars at the Rose Bowl. Ucla won 24-23.Mandatory Credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports
The defense has several starters out for the season, but now the offense is dropping like flies. Last week, UCLA got word that WR Mossi Johnson would be unavailable for the rest of the year. Last night, the Bruins added to that list as OL Conor McDermott and Alex Redmond were held out of the game by the coaches. Reports from ESPN during the game stated that their helmets were kept away from them, so there was that.
The officiating sucked too, but that is a whole other article.
The point here is that UCLA Football has no identity right now and another loss to a very disciplined Cardinal team revealed that about them. The defense can’t do what they normally do with so many injuries and the offense is a crap shoot with both play calling and execution.
Josh Rosen and Paul Perkins were not bad last night, they actually had some impressive plays, but for the most part, the collective Bruin effort was non-existent which disallowed Rosen and Perkins to operate. It was very off-putting.
FYI, expect a very stern “offensive play-calling” article very soon.
The reality… UCLA Football is no where near competing for any championship any time soon.
So the Bruins are not ready for the big time, which is unfortunate. Things have improved since Mora took over, but simply being better than the last two coaching regimes is not his goal. Mora has made it clear that a National Championship is the goal.
The reality… UCLA Football is no where near competing for any championship any time soon.
But maybe one day.
And on that day, hopefully I can finish “1999” and attribute the “partying” aspect of that song to UCLA Football. Hopefully. I can dream you know.
"Let me tell you something/ If you didn’t come to party/ Don’t bother knocking on my door/ I got a lion in my pocket/ And baby he’s ready to roar/ Yeah, everybody’s got a bomb/ We could all die any day/ But before I’ll let that happen/ I’ll dance my life away"
…with a championship.
Go Bruins!