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

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PASADENA, CA – OCTOBER 20: Quarterback Wilton Speight #3 of the UCLA Bruins passes the ball in the second half during the NCAA college football game against the Arizona Wildcats at the Rose Bowl on October 20, 2018 in Pasadena, California. The Bruins defeated the Wildcats 31-30. (Photo by Victor Decolongon/Getty Images) /

Game Summary

At the bottom line, the issue this week was run success rate at only 32% (a big drop off from the 50% run success rate at the Cal TE Party). Passing success was fine, but unspectacular at 46%. An overall success rate of 39% will normally get you a lot of losses in the Pac-12.

I was hoping there would be some clear separation between DTR and Speight buried in the play log. They had very similar success rates and YPP. DTR offense had a little better success running, while Speight led offense has a little better success passing. If you look at the run/pass YPP, those results are actually flipped (Speight plays got better YPC running, DTR plays got better YPP passing). To me, this backs up Chip’s week 1 plan to start Speight and give DTR some run in a package; it’s a very close call between the two.

More from Go Joe Bruin

Last week I chronicled the highly successful first deployment of Check-With-Me. It was still in use this week, but much less often (less than half as much as last week vs Cal) and also less successful (45% success this week vs 68% last week). They seemed to struggle to get the check signals in this week, which I think contributed to the regression (HERE you can see Caleb Wilson trying to get details from DTR post-check). This was a new skill introduced just last week, and they are still developing the muscle and mental memory (rep it until you can’t get it wrong!).

They ran the ball 82% of the time after a check, and still did pretty well passing after the check. I continue to hold that they only do this check on called run plays, have the option to flip that run play, and rarely switch to a pass when something lines up really favorably. This, unfortunately, makes no-check a bit of a pass-tell. Did you impress anyone predicting runs after checks at watch parties this week? They checked a lot on the last drive as a part of their clock killing efforts.

Switching to calls and performance by down; there is run focused failure on 1st down (19% success rate on 1st down runs), and right down the middle on 2nd down (with respect to both run/pass balance and success rates).

Third down got downright pass-wacky (84% pass rate) and was actually fairly successful (47% success on 3rd) for the holes they had dug for themselves. 3rd down had been a huge struggle vs Cal, but a bright spot this week vs Arizona. Third down as also the most explosive slice of data in that overstuffed table above, with 18.8 YPP on successes. Instead of run-run-pass-punt this week, it was runfail-runfail-long completion.

This 3rd down performance also correlates to excellent results in obvious passing situations. They had a lot longer to go in passing situations this week and chose not to try to run themselves out of those long to go distances. A 48% success rate on passing downs is incredible and is the real story of how the offense won this game. Give Speight some credit for finding the open guys when given time.

Chip did not use any running plays with detached tight ends this week. I call sandbag. I really hope detached TE running is a future one game surprise wrinkle because it’s been successful in limited use before this week.