Go Joe Bruin’s analytics guru Chris Osgood takes a look at the UCLA football team’s play calling and outcome from their 37-7 win over California.
The first level analysis of UCLA football‘s offense from the Cal game was well covered on air and the day after; Chip Kelly channeled his inner Norv Turner to ride a plethora of Tight Ends from under center to run the ball 71% of the time.
RELATED: Kelley, Kelly, and The Bruins Strike Gold in Win Over Cal
The more interesting development to me was the first deployment of the Check-With-Me approach to play calling by UCLA this year. This is where the offense lines up and all turn to look at the coach for a last minute play change after the defense lines up (based on personnel). This article chronicles the practice seeping into the NFL this year.
"What I’ve just described has been going on in college football for years in Check With Me offenses. Ever notice that some college offense will line up and possibly go through some motion or quarterback cadence before 11 heads suddenly turn to the sideline? That’s a Check With Me. The offense is looking for a signal from the coaching staff now that the staff has had a chance to see the defense line up. College offenses that play at a high tempo have the luxury to exercise these checks because they’re lined up a full 25 seconds before they need to snap the ball."
It was funny watching the far side offensive tackles struggle to pick out the call from the sideline much of the time. What we won’t know, is if Chip placed this responsibility on the QB before (and yanked it away from DTR this game), or if they had simply been running whatever was called (regardless of the opposing defensive alignment).
They used Check-With-Me on 19 of their 63 plays this week (never from under center) and achieved an eye popping 8.0 YPP, with a 63% success rate, and 11.7 YPP on successes. 16 of the 19 Check-With-Me’s wound up being mesh run IZR or OZR plays. The most common obvious change after a check was to flip the RB side in hybrid alignment. The three passes that came after a check had a 100% success rate.
I think the main check was whether or not to flip a called read option run play, with a simple alternative call to a set pass play by exception. The success of this approach showcases Chip Kelly’s ability to diagnose what’s going on real time. Will Chip continue to use Check-With-Me going forward, or was this another single week wrinkle? I’ve added a “CWM” column to the google doc and will keep tracking it if it’s still in use going forward. Impress your friends at viewing parties next week by predicting IZR after every check.
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).
Personnel
Last week vs Washington marked the first time Chip kept it simple and streamlined on the personnel front at UCLA, using only 3 personnel groups. This week they stayed with only 3 personnel groups, keeping 11 and 12, but swapping last week’s 10 out for 13. There were no plays without a TE on the field this week.
13 Personnel (3 TEs) had a really solid success rate (58%), despite low YPP (3.3) upside. The 13 personnel was only used with an average of 3.5 yards to go. The 13 personnel had only 1 or 2 yards to go on 8 of the 12 times it was used. Their lone 4th down play succeeded in part because it went against the tendency, being the only pass play from 13 personnel the whole day.
RB Playing Time and Alignment
Josh Kelley gobbled up 81% of the tailback playing time this week. Everybody else didn’t do much with the limited opportunities (17% success and 2.6 YPP with Kelley out!). Bolu Olorunfunmi was in for two running plays but didn’t get the ball either time; once was a jet sweep, the other was an IZR where someone got the alignment wrong. DTR meshed right and Bolu went left. Cole Kinder got 6 carries in a row to ice the garbage time. I kept it out of the log for garbage time reasons, but it was really fun to watch!
All the niche RB alignments (Next, Pro I, Pistol) didn’t go so well this week. When they keep it simple with Hybrid and Pro Ace, things go much more according to plan. The pistol had a good YPC because of a single nice DTR keeper but otherwise was not successful. Pro I was new this week; for the first time, they had a 2nd skill player (a TE) in the backfield while QB was under center. I expect it to go away quickly (TEs are simply not the same as FBs). They were under center for 20 out of 63 plays this week (32% of the time); I bet you would have guessed it was more often. The hybrid shotgun is still the basis of this offense, even when getting TE crazy.
Week to Week trends
Nice and linear success rate improvement over the last 4 weeks. Success rate came in well above the national average this week. YPP backed off from last week a little (and dipped just below national average). They did a really good job staying out of obvious passing situations this week.
The common eye test narrative is that Washington was a data point for progress and Cal establishes a favorable trend; this view mostly backs that up quantitatively. I wonder if Chip has an ideal run/pass ratio…because look at that yellow line jump all over. We need Ben Bolch to ask this question, and get the answer “Whatever run/pass ratio gives us the best chance to win.”
Footnote
The google doc linked here has every UCLA offense play logged with the situation, pre-snap details, and post snap results. I like to look for how the situation and pre-snap looks inform play calling and results. In the past, I’ve done this (on staff) for the SBN NFL Chargers blog, and got a lot of great reader participation.
My hope is that readers look at it and find stuff along with me (something pre-snap is a tell, something else very successful). This post has context for everything in the log.