Go Joe Bruin takes a look at the UCLA football team’s outcomes for the play calling against Arizona to find out what was successful and what still needs work.
While the overall outcome was a win this week for the UCLA football team, there was some definite regression in the offensive production against Arizona. The Dorian Thompson-Robinson injury and return of Wilton Speight at QB brought back a passing game emphasis.
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With Speight in the game, the offense as a whole felt like a flashback to the scheme used in the nonconference games (which had us all pondering broke NFL Chip or sandbagging Chip). We’ll get more into this as we progress through the details, but the bottom line is that this offense is still searching for an identity.
The one offensive wrinkle this week was passing out of tightly bunched formations like the one seen HERE. This is 11 personnel (3WR) looking like a mess of tight ends cluttering everything in the middle. I think the idea was to create space in the flats; Allen got his TD catch with a similar alignment. I couldn’t figure out what to call this; “bunch” is a very specific flavor of trips WRs out wide and this isn’t that. It didn’t seem particularly effective (seems like the line was getting confused with so many bodies in the middle), and I hope it goes in the dumpster with other abandoned single game wrinkles.
YPP Chart
Welcome our old friend the third-quarter-lurch back. We missed you, buddy! The return of this lurch could once again be Chip Kelly losing the halftime adjustment battle. The production overall was very feast/famine this week. There were 14 negative plays and 16 zero yard plays! This is probably the worst counts of those two results all season. They did however also run the most plays (80) of the season in a single game this week. Possession outcomes really hinged on some clutch 3rd down conversions.
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.
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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.
Spotlight Drive
The 14th and next-to-last drive of the game created the winning endgame situation. When they were trailing and needed a score late, they went for four straight 1st downs (aided by a face-mask penalty on their lone unsuccessful play) straight to the end zone. This drive featured minimal substitution, 3 different skill players advancing the ball, and had a perfect 50/50 run-pass balance to achieve 15.0 YPP with a 75% success rate. A lot of the attention was justifiably on the 15th clock-killer drive, but this quick gem set up that drive.
Personnel
Personnel tracking is starting to become an uninteresting subject; they used 11 personnel 73% of the time vs Arizona. 11’s performance mirrors the overall game look because of its high usage. 13 and 10 showed up for only a single play each. 12 personnel (2 TE) was really bad this week.
RB playing Time and Alignment
Similar to 11 personnel, Kelley’s usage dominance makes the RB rotation a little less interesting. Irby got all 7 of his snaps on the end of 1st half 2 minute drill drive. The hurry up approach to this drive kept him from getting any carries. Kaz Allen at least got a touchdown catch for his 4 plays.
The offense got really burned this week by their run predictability when operating under center (26% success rate, 3.2 YPP). This has got to be a tendency that Chip plans to break when needed. I don’t know why you would bother to run a single pistol play. I doubt they repped that one until they couldn’t get it wrong this week (one run for -3 yards).
When the RBs creep up to be next to the QB in the shotgun (instead of staggered slightly behind in hybrid), they are either pass protecting or excited to run their routes. This has been and could continue to be a pass-tell. I don’t know if this is Chip’s design or the RBs just being undisciplined, but all 3 of them (Kelley, Allen, Irby) do it.
Week to Week Chart
Looking at the bigger picture, the summary indicators objectively show the step backward in terms of all three success rates (overall, run, and pass). YPP crept back above national average this week (and is generally trending up since the Colorado bottom). Once again, they didn’t do a good job on early downs to stay out of passing situations.
Washington was good YPP with OK success rates, Cal was good success rates with OK YPP. This week was good YPP with poor success rates. They really need to put the YPP and success rates together if they want to at least keep things interesting in the Pac-12 South.
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.