UCLA Football: Don’t expect the blur offense, expect the obscure offense
One thing UCLA football fans need to expect is that Chip Kelly is not going to run the same offense he made famous at Oregon but will evolve it with the Bruins and we are seeing that process come to fruition every week.
When Chip Kelly was hired, it is safe to say that the majority of UCLA football fans were expecting him to implement the same type of system he nurtured and developed at Oregon. So far, that has not been the case.
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At Oregon, Kelly’s system was based on the success of running the inside zone read. Kelly’s teams were notorious for running these plays as they were the basis for his system and the Ducks ran it to perfection. With teams looking to defend the zone read, it opened up the rest of the offense for alternate play calling (RPO, screens, sweeps, etc.), which made it even harder to stop Oregon. But why is the zone read (especially inside) so important?
There are three key elements to making the zone read work: (1) blocking which allows the play to happen, (2) the QB reading the defense and (3) the vision of the ball carrier (RB or QB) to find the holes in the line.
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What made this work at Oregon, almost from the get-go, was the fact that Kelly had the players to run it. Since he has taken over at UCLA, he has not had that luxury as he has turned over the roster to make it his own. Is it there yet? No, but it is starting to take shape.
Because of this, Kelly has not been running his Oregon offense at UCLA and looking at what he has done in the first seven games, we should no longer expect him to.
One reason for this is because of his personnel. He does not have the players to work the “blur offense”, thusly, he will not use that system. It comes down to execution. If the players cannot do what is asked of them, why would Kelly continue on that path? The first year coach said he wants to win now so he is going to implement a game plan that will help meet that goal. But along with that, Kelly knows that he is being watched and running the same old system that half the college football world has figured out is not going to lead to success (i.e. being figured out in Philadelphia and San Francisco).