UCLA Football: Spring Game Recap – Defense

With the UCLA football team moving in a different direction with defensive coordinator Jerry Azzinaro taking over, we saw the defense become more aggressive in the Spring Game, and there is more to come.

The UCLA football team is done with spring practice but Go Joe Bruin has just started to dissect this team, especially since the Bruins gave us a lot to mull over during the Spring Game.

RELATED: UCLA Football Spring Game Recap

On Saturday, the defense showed a lot of promise under Jerry Azzinaro and the aggressiveness and violence we have been hearing about was on full display.

For the most part, even though the White team beat the Blue team 16-10, the defense on both squads had several shining moments. The defensive players were visibly active, swarming ball carriers, attacking passes and generally manhandling the offense, especially on the line.

UCLA’s new offense which has adopted RPO and zone read schemes, had some success deceiving the defense as the quarterbacks and running backs had several good runs that went for 10+ yards, but they did not let get everything past them.

On the first play of the game, QB Devon Modster kept the ball as he read the defense running to the strong side. The QB ran out to the right to find TE Devin Asiasi, but he was not given a lot of room to move as LB Keisean Lucier-South was not fooled by the deception and got to Asiasi for only a 2-yard gain.

Related Story: UCLA Football: Austin Burton just knocked the QB battle up a notch

On the next play, the Blue team tried to run the ball up the middle with Bolu Olorunfunmi, but was immediately met in the back field by several defensive players led by DL Rick Wade to get the 5-yard tackle for a loss. On the next play, LB Krys Barnes perfectly read Modster’s telegraphed pass and leapt up to grab the interception.

More Spring Game: A look at the UCLA offensive line

These three plays were a perfect introduction to the UCLA defense. They no longer wait and react to what the offense is doing (a trait of last season’s DC Tom Bradley) but rather try to read the offense and quickly react to limit big plays.

More from Go Joe Bruin

• UCLA Football: It’s time for the nation to meet Dante Moore
• UCLA Football: Where are they ranked heading into week 4
• UCLA Football: Position battle breakdown for Utah showdown
• UCLA vs. Utah: Location, time, prediction, and more
• UCLA Football: Highlights from Chip Kelly’s appearance on the Jim Rome Show

That is another big difference between last year’s defense and this year’s, as they will probably allow more big plays as the defense will take more risks, but it seems to be worth it as both defenses only allowed 14 (a safety added to the final score of 16) and 10 points in a half (the “game” was the length of one half of football).

On the line, the defense seemed to really pressure the O-line when they weren’t getting deceived by the zone read/RPO plays. On several occasions, the DLs were pushing back the OLs off the line and quickly closing gaps. There were a handful of plays in which the defense got a sack or tackle for a loss on the ball carrier.

Wade, Osa Odighizuwa and Moses Robinson-Carr (a converted TE that has showed phenomenal progress since switching positions at the start of spring) all found ways to shed blocks and get into the backfield. With a mixture of quickness (which hasn’t really been mentioned in regards to the defense) and “violence”, the DL is surely looking to change their image from last season when they had one of the worst run defenses in the country.

The best thing about all of this is that Saturday’s game did not have key members of the defense due to injury. EDGE rusher Jaelan Phillips, LB Josh Woods and LB Mique Juarez were all injured throughout spring and expected to play a large art in the D, especially when coming off the edge or  stopping the run close to the line of scrimmage.

The secondary continued to look solid and limited the QBs options to pass. What was noticeably obvious was the fact that the DBs played tight zone defense, only allowing receivers to occasionally break away. There were not a lot of deep passes given up and on top of that, the defense snagged three interceptions (though one was from LB Barnes, CB Elijah Gates and CB Mo Osling III snagged the other two out of the air with good reads on the QB).

Next: The 30 Greatest UCLA Football Players of All-Time

As aggressive as this defense was, it is no where near their potential, which we could see come this fall. Though the offense will be fun to watch under Chip Kelly, the defense is going just as entertaining under Azzinaro.