UCLA Football: Bruins Land 4-Star WR Chase Cota

Chip Kelly landed his second elite wide receiver recruit in four days on Wednesday, as 4-star receiver Chase Cota (Medford, OR/South Medford) followed the lead of Bryan Addison and announced his pledge to UCLA Football in an afternoon ceremony at his high school.

For young Chase Cota, growing up in the state of Oregon as an Oregon fan with a father, Chad, who is legendary in Eugene for leading the Ducks to the 1995 Rose Bowl, his formative years were no doubt shaped by dreams of glory catching touchdowns in Chip Kelly’s explosive offense. Today, Chase Cota confirmed he would be doing just that with his college choice.

The twist, though, is that Cota will be doing it in blue-and-gold instead of green-and-yellow, as UCLA Football pulled a bit of an upset over legacy favorite Oregon to land the pledge of one of the top wide receiver recruits in the country.

Related Story: UCLA Football: 2018 4-star athlete Bryan Addison commits to Bruins

Listed at 6-foot-4 and 195 pounds, Cota is a huge target with great ball skills and the length and body control needed to be a prime red zone target. Lining up across from future teammate and fellow recent UCLA football commit Bryan Addison, who stands 6-foot-5 himself, the Bruins will be definitely be able to utilize each player’s wide catch radius by putting the ball up on the top shelf where only the big boys can eat and cash in plenty of points in doing so.

But Cota won’t just make an impact on height alone. He is a smooth route-runner with surprisingly elite speed for any player, much less one his size. He clocked a 4.53 40-yard dash time at The Opening, so he’s an absolute burner and as his film above shows, he’s a consistent big-play target and deep threat who can take the top off a defense. And as his defensive highlights show (he’s a standout defensive back for his high school too, but will be playing wide receiver exclusively in college), he has a physical edge to his game, which bodes well in Chip Kelly’s offensive scheme that relies heavily on quality blocking by the wide receivers to break off big running plays.

For UCLA, the offensive skill positions are quickly being restocked with high-end size and skill, as would be expected in an environment where recruits who grew up watching Chip Kelly’s offense revolutionize college football will be salivating at the possibilities available to them under UCLA football’s new regime. 4-star skill players Kazmeir Allen, Bryan Addison, and now Chase Cota have all committed to UCLA since the hiring of the esteemed Kelly. For the latter two, the recruiting contributions of wide receivers coach Jimmie Dougherty also cannot be emphasized enough, as Dougherty has shown himself in less than a year in Westwood to be a skill position recruiter who can legitimately rival USC’s Tee Martin on the recruiting trail.

https://twitter.com/ccota_/status/936467192849166337

With Cota, who plans to enroll early at UCLA, now in hand, the Bruins have five committed wide receivers forming an excellent position class. However, with two of those commitments potentially being in doubt, Dougherty is still recruiting a number of Top 250 wide receivers, many of whom look to be leaning to UCLA at the moment, so this is shaping up to be a memorable wide receiver haul for the Bruins and Dougherty is potentially on course to be named Pac-12 Recruiter of the Year if the class closes the way he’s hoping it does.

Next: UCLA Football Recruiting: Commits, decommits and moving forward

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Welcome to Westwood, Chase!