UCLA football is 6-2 this season, and they are playing far below initial expectations.
Rather that being in the drivers seat in the Pac-12 South and in the thick of the race for the College Football Playoff, time and time again the Bruins are barely beating lower competition, and losing games they frankly shouldn’t (cough, cough Utah) if they just played good football all-around for 60 minutes.
Although the Bruins have been improving offensively over the last few weeks despite Noel Mazzone’s playcalling woes, defensively it is a different story.
UCLA allows 30.9 points per game and an unacceptable 437 total yards per game. That includes giving up an astounding 626 total yards to Arizona State.
The truth is, UCLA has one of the worst defenses in the Pac-12 and the nation and the playcalling of first-year defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich has a lot to do with that.
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My biggest issues with Ulbrich are his tendency to rely on zone defense, and having the defensive backs play off the receivers instead of pressing them at the line of scrimmage. Granted, UCLA doesn’t have as much speed as the last few seasons, but that is opening them up to getting torched with slant and in routes.
Ulbrich is living very dangerously with his schemes, and the following is becoming more apparent: Unless changes are made quickly, he should get fired because of the defense’s poor performance.
In addition to the difficulties defending the pass, stopping the run game is another major problem. Particularly in the Utah, Oregon, and Colorado games, the Bruins much-hyped defensive line was dominated to the tune of allowing 244 yards. This was due to not only problems on the line, but also the UCLA secondary missing multiple tackles throughout the game. The problems in the secondary especially is a coaching problem, and those have persisted all season both against the run and pass.
As of right now I have no confidence in Ulbrich and like I said, a lot of major improvement needs to be made between now and the end of the year or he could be looking for another position.
Both Ulbrich and the Bruins have a huge opportunity over this last month, however. UCLA is not out of the Pac-12 South race — although they would need some help along with winning out — and if they were to finish November 4-0 and make an appearance in the conference championship game, they could vault in the College Football Playoff poll. As of this writing UCLA is ranked #22 and with a challenging few games remaining against Arizona, Washington, USC and Stanford, they should move up a lot if they run the table this month. Based on how they have been playing thus far, that may not happen, but the Bruins do have a little extra motivation heading into the November slate.
This is by far the biggest month of both UCLA and Ulbrich’s season so far and hopefully both of them can turn the tide and change the perception of the Bruin defense.
Time to step up, make some adjustments, and make that happen.