UCLA Football: The 2018 schedule has been released

We haven’t finished with the 2017 UCLA Football schedule quite yet but we can already start looking toward next year now that the 2018 schedule was released in its entirety Thursday morning.

The 2017 version of the UCLA Football team still has two games remaining on their schedule in USC and Cal respectively. They’re one game away from being bowl eligible but neither game remaining is a gimme and there’s a chance they won’t go bowling this year. That would be a potentially very somber end to the Josh Rosen era should he go pro after this year.

If we are going to look forward though to life after Rosen we should also take notice of the schedule that was released in full Thursday morning.

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First up is the non-conference schedule that has the Bruins taking on the University of Cincinnati and Fresno State in the Rose Bowl during the first month of the season. While those are easier opponents in the grand scheme of things, the UC Bearcats are slowly building their program back up and the Bruins don’t want to catch them on the upswing. The major battle in September though will be a trip to Norman, Oklahoma to take on the Sooners. It’s a major match up that will be very interesting to monitor and dive into as the 2018 season looms larger.

The UCLA Football team catches a little bit of a break with a bye week coming before PAC-12 play begins and get the Colorado Buffaloes on a Friday night in Boulder. While the bye week is welcome before conference play, it’s an earlier one meaning the Bruins will have to navigate their conference schedule without a break later on in the season.

Washington at home and then away to Cal follow next. This UCLA Football team was smashed by the Huskies in Seattle but will lose a host of players from this season. Will they be able to continue their strong run or will they have to take a year to rebuild? The Bruins then get Arizona and Utah at home but the Utah game is on a Friday and no one in the country is thrilled about playing a Friday night game without a bye in front of it. That will be a tough test for UCLA as they get an always physical Utes team on a short week.

Away at Oregon and Arizona State are the next two on the slate and despite the Bruins taking both of these teams down this season, the matchup isn’t as favorable away. What will ASU look like with so many departures though? I’m not sure they have the depth they’ll need and 2018 could be a very down year. If Oregon QB Justin Herbert is able to stay healthy there’s no ceiling on the Ducks.

The last two games of the season are predictably the USC Trojans and then a season finale meeting against the Stanford Cardinal. I am in no way a fan of playing anyone the week after USC but that’s the PAC-12 for you. If, and it’s kind of a big if, Jim Mora is retained as the head coach of the UCLA Football program can he finally find a way to win the final game of the season at home and beat Stanford at the same time?

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It’s hard to comment on what the win/loss ratio will look like given how much the Bruins potentially stand to lose but UCLA does get a majority of the teams we think are stronger this year at home next year and will have to travel against teams they’ve beaten. Still, there’s only so much speculation that can be done without knowing how the landscape of 2018 looks not just for the UCLA Football team but for the rest of college football as well.