UCLA Football: Being real about the Bruins’ success in 2018

A lot of Bruins fans are optomistic about UCLA football’s future after hiring Chip Kelly, and they should be.  But they should also be realistic about what might happen in 2018.

With Spring Football wrapped up, I started thinking about next season, optomistic about 2018, I remembered the article here on Go Joe Bruin about how ESPN’s FPI predicted that UCLA football would go 5-7 next season, and 48th overall.

RELATED: UCLA Football – Post-Spring Projected 2-Deep Depth Chart

FPI, which stands for Football Power Index, is more or less a power rankings made by ESPN that predicts how well teams will perform in the season.

At first I scoffed at the idea that UCLA would go 5-7 in 2018.  After all, we had just hired Chip Kelly and would surely have a 9 win season.  But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that UCLA might actually go 5-7 and that Bruin fans shouldn’t panic if that happens.

While I think UCLA will probably do a bit better than that,  here’s some things to think about next season.

Strength of schedule

Part of the reason UCLA is predicted to go 5-7 is that the Bruins have one of the most difficult schedules next season

UCLA is predicted to play two teams in the top 10 FPI,  #6 Washington and number #9 Oklahoma (In Norman no less), as well as three more in the top 25 with Stanford, SC, and Oregon.  I don’t know if its the most difficult schedule in the country but it has to be up there.