On the eve of UCLA Football’s 2016 spring practice, Go Joe Bruin looks into the major philosophical shift that could come to define Jim Mora’s tenure with the Bruins.
As the 2015 football season approached, there was a cautious optimism about UCLA football’s chances to secure a division crown and possibly contend for higher honors. Although the media picked the Bruins to finish third in the Pac-12 South, that was primarily down to one issue: replacing star quarterback Brett Hundley with highly-rated true freshman Josh Rosen.
The rest of the team, though, was considered to be loaded. With premium talents like Kenny Clark, Myles Jack, Paul Perkins, and Eddie Vanderdoes to be found throughout the roster, pundits expected Jim Mora‘s squad to soar if Rosen was able to quickly establish himself as a top-flight college quarterback.
UCLA Bruins
However, when the season started, a funny thing happened: by and large, Rosen was an absolute phenom who was one of the best quarterbacks in the Pac-12 from Week 1 on… but the rest of the team found itself struggling to perform to its potential on a week-to-week basis, especially the defense under new defensive coordinator Tom Bradley.
Time would seem to be of the essence for UCLA to break through the glass ceiling of 9 regular season wins and pursue the Pac-12 title in earnest, given the likelihood that the Bruins will only have the generational talents of Rosen for two more seasons.
We cannot emphasize this point enough: Josh Rosen is the single most consequential player that has played at UCLA since Troy Aikman. When a team has a generational talent at quarterback, the team’s ceiling is absolutely unlimited. As such, it stands to reason that every single decision made about the program for the next two years needs to be made with one question in mind: does this put Rosen in a better position to lead UCLA to a national championship?
With the most naturally talented quarterback in the program’s history behind center and solid recruiting efforts stocking the roster with athletes aplenty, the next two seasons are the kind in which a program should go all in and cater to its strengths in order to overwhelm any potential weaknesses.
Curiously though, this is instead the moment in which Mora has decided to take a sharp philosophical turn in order to cover up a few glaring weaknesses in his program. While adjustments were absolutely necessary after a turbulent 2015 season, the type of adjustments that are being proposed represent a startling gamble that has a high probability of taking the two most important seasons of his time in charge of UCLA football — the years remaining with Rosen — and unnecessarily turning them into rebuilding years by minimizing his program’s strengths.
Next: The Problems