On this Halloween Day, the #24 UCLA Football team was involved in a horror of their own as they escape embarrassment at the hands of the last place Colorado Buffaloes with a 35-31 comeback victory at the Rose Bowl.
Have you ever seen The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (the original, not the crappy remakes)? You know how the entire length of the film there was this uncomfortable awkwardness followed by violent bloodletting at the hands of nothing-to-lose sociaopaths? And remember how the girl escapes at the end as Leatherface is psychotically waving his chainsaw in the air after members of her party had perished?
In this case, the girl and her friends are UCLA Football (6-2, 3-2) and Leatherface and Co. are Colorado (4-5, 1-4), a team with nothing to lose that came out ready to cut people’s heads off.
This UCLA football game might as well have been a The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake as the Buffaloes sliced and diced UCLA with a massive comeback late in the game (similar to last year’s atrocity in Boulder) putting the Bruin’s South Division hopes in jeopardy.
The Bruins, coming off a huge 40-24 victory over then-#20 Cal Golden Bears, had nine days to prepare for the last place Buffaloes and try to strengthen their role in the South Division. Instead it was once again an unbalanced, uninspired effort that forced the Bruins to have to comeback themselves in a game where they were up 28-16 at the end of the third-quarter.
Colorado was able to score 15 points in the final frame, taking a 31-28 lead with just over 12 minutes left in the game.
It was a bloody affair filled with terrifying offensive playcalling, horrible time management, stupid penalties, the wearing down of defensive players (due to being on the field way too long) and those pesky trolls known as the Pac-12 refs.
I have not been this scared since I was a child. Or since last year’s Colorado game.
UCLA did manage to make a comeback effort which head coach Jim Mora said “builds grit“. That maybe so, but if the Bruins handled their business early in the game, they would not have to worry about building grit and just worry about building a strong resume for the College Football Playoff committee.
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This was the third game in the last four that UCLA has been outmanned. The only problem with this game is the fact that it came against last place Colorado Buffaloes.
Excuses aside, this was not a complete game and this is not the type of team that is destined for a quality bowl in the postseason as of right now.
If UCLA wants to get to that elite level, they need to make changes quickly and realize the patterns they are falling into are haunting them and will continue to do so if no changes are made. If they don’t learn from the past, they will not be ready for the future.
Just like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise, the Bruins will keep getting worse if they do not do something about it now.