According to Athlon, the UCLA football team will not be one of the Top 25 most successful teams in the nation in 2018, Chip Kelly’s first year as head coach.
Athlon released their 2018 Top 25 rankings which are not preseason rankings, but final predictions of where the sports magazine believes teams will finish by the end of next season. The UCLA football team did not make the cut.
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The Bruins are in transition as they move from Jim Mora to Kelly and after finishing 6-7 last season, it looks as though Athlon thinks the new coach will need more than a season to finish as one of the Top 25 teams in the nation.
College Football Top 25: It's never too early to start thinking about what might transpire this fall https://t.co/wBt1Af9Kgu pic.twitter.com/wncaeJhPEi
— Athlon Sports (@AthlonSports) May 21, 2018
The Bruins should make some marked improvements, but will they be enough to make a splash in Kelly’s first year? There are several things the new coaching staff has to work on and develop, like improving the offensive line and shoring up the run defense.
UCLA seems to be heading down that path, especially with the talent and coaching staff they possess, but it will definitely take some time to get this machine up and running.
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UCLA also has one of the toughest schedules in the nation as they will face the likes of Oklahoma, Washington, Stanford and USC next season. Though the last three will all be at the Rose Bowl, it is going to be one brutal schedule as every team tries to battle for division supremacy, especially in the South.
So with that in mind, it is understandable why the Bruins were left out of Athlon’s rankings and why other Pac-12 teams made the list. In the South, #19 USC made the cut, but as the magazine admits, “the gap between USC and Utah or Arizona is very narrow headed into 2018”.
From the North, #8 Washington and #18 Stanford are no surprise on this list, but #23 Oregon is a slight head scratcher, especially over UCLA, but hey, these are only predictions.
We still have a long way until the end of 2018 and there is a lot to prepare for. As way-too-early rankings go, this is just another brick in the 2018 college football projection wall. Hopefully UCLA can prove Athlon wrong and crack the rankings by season’s end, but if they don’t, it is not that big of a deal as long as the Bruins are headed in the right direction heading into 2019.
Next: UCLA Football: 10 bold predictions for the 2018 season
And for those interested, Athlon’s Top 5 are as follows: #1 Alabama, #2 Clemson, #3 Georgia, #4 Ohio State, #Michigan.