UCLA Football: Play call/outcome analysis from the California game

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BERKELEY, CA – OCTOBER 13: Dorian Thompson-Robinson #7 of the UCLA Bruins celebrates after the Bruins scored a touchdown against the California Golden Bears at California Memorial Stadium on October 13, 2018 in Berkeley, California. (Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images) /

Game Summary and YPP Chart

The customary 3rd quarter lull came early this week (end of 2nd quarter). New to the chart this week, is color coding each play as success or failure. There were two YPP rolling average peaks in late 1st/early 2nd and the entire 3rd quarter. Almost all negative plays took place in 1st half. I think Chip finally won a halftime adjustment battle (for the first time this year). Did ‘Check-With-Me’ approach help in this regard?

With a run/pass balance of 71% in favor of the running game and 4.7 YPC, passing got easy for DTR (

PFF’s highest adjusted completion % in NCAA this week

!). Chip even called run plays 59% of the time they were in obvious passing situations, which shows that unflinching commitment to establishing the run this week. On those passing down runs, they achieved a healthy 7.1 YPC, but only succeeded 30% of the time.

It’s been a long established theme that the 2018 UCLA offense moves the ball better without attached TEs (probably due to the spreading effect on the defense and Caleb Wilson’s blocking being not quite at the level of his receiving), but typically runs plays with TEs attached twice as often as plays without attached TEs. That needle went bonkers this week, with 58 out of 64 snaps (92%!) using attached tight ends. The non-attached TE results were still better (100% success rate!), even in limited use. Look for this to be a future wrinkle of the week, where Chip goes a whole game with 1 TE personnel (flexed wide) the entire game.

Even though the offense was operating pretty well this week, 3rd down was problematic with a 2.8 YPP and 38% success rate. The good news is they were so good on 1st and 2nd down, they were only in 3rd down 21% of the time (so being bad on 3rd down didn’t really matter).