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

Overall Analysis

My favorite axes to grind; Check With Me, Pre Snap Motion, and Play Faking were on display as high upside/low leverage options against Arizona State. They all blew away baseline success rate for the game (67%, 70%, 75% respectively), but were criminally underutilized. Is it plain hubris that Chip doesn’t use these more?  Is he saving it for next year?  I can’t explain it. Check With Me was on a steady increase every week since its introduction four weeks ago against Cal, but was almost completely shelved this week (only used 6 times). Pre Snap Motion has been a run tendency of late, and that trend was continued against Arizona State (90% run tendency with pre-snap motion).

2nd down was where the wheels came off his week (30% success rate). There’s been one particular down that has been a struggle each of the last several weeks. It was 1st down against Arizona and 3rd down against Oregon, but this game was 2nd down’s turn. I don’t know whether or not better offenses are more consistent in their success rates by down. If any of our readers have an expedient way to explore this, let’s do it!

The offense was all but conceded to passing on passing downs (85% pass) and 3rd down (100% pass), but was still relatively productive in those two situations (40% successful on passing downs and 50% successful on 3rd downs).

For almost the entire season I’ve been suggesting that detached TEs are underutilized and very successful in both passing and rushing. This week saw a significant increase in formations without attached TEs, but that approach was not rewarded as those plays were only 38% successful in getting 4.6 YPP. Attached TEs blew detached TEs away with a 61% success rate on 9.6 YPP. I’ll point out that 8 of Caleb Wilson‘s 11 catches for 164 yards came from attached TE formations. Expect to see attached TEs coming roaring back in usage for the rest of the year.