UCLA Football Moves Forward With a New Offensive Direction and Staff
With a new focus on offense and an almost entirely new staff, the UCLA Football team is now set to for their 2017 campaign.
The UCLA Football team now has all their parts in place heading into the 2017 season. After an atrocious offensive output in 2016, the Bruins deconstructed most of their staff and replaced it with a new offensive ideology.
UCLA Football Head Coach Jim Mora did not evolve the program. He ripped it up and started over again.
The change was needed, but it does give the Bruins a major hill to get over.
It is not that they will have their third offensive coordinator in three years or a completely new system to learn, it is that every offensive position group, sans tight ends, will have a new coach to learn from.
| Position Coach | 2016 | 2017 |
|---|---|---|
| Offensive Coordinator | Kennedy Polamalu | Jedd Fisch |
| Quarterbacks | Marques Tuiasosopo | Jedd Fisch |
| Running Backs | Kennedy Polamalu | DeShaun Foster |
| Receivers | Eric Yarber | Jimmie Dougherty |
| Tight Ends | Rip Scherer | Rip Scherer |
| Offensive Line | Adrian Klemm | Hank Fraley |
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With the firing of Kennedy Polamalu, Mora went to an up-and-comer out of Michigan. Jedd Fisch was the QB coach for Jim Harbaugh and was responsible for the success of the Wolverines most recent quarterbacks Jake Rudock and Wilton Speight. With Fisch now in charge of the Bruin offense, it was up to him to put together a staff of his liking.
That included making himself coach of the quarterbacks. The awkward part about that was UCLA already had Marques Tuiasosopo as their QB coach. That was quickly resolved when Tuiasosopo took the same position with Cal.
Mora then did what many expected might happen and relieved Adrian Klemm of his duties. He then brought in Hank Fraley to replace Klemm as well as DeShaun Foster to fill the running backs position left by Polamalu.