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

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(Photo by Harry How/Getty Images) /

The UCLA football team had a tremendous offensive effort against USC. How did it happen? Go Joe Bruin looks at it in the weekly “Play calling/outcome analysis” segment.

The UCLA football team took out the USC Trojans, 34-27. It was a methodical performance backed by Joshua Kelley‘s 289 rushing yards.

So how did it all happen? Let us find out…

A deliberate yet unpredictable running game

The run-pass balance for UCLA against USC this week was 64% in favor of the run. This was the highest run-favored balance of the season, other than the Cal game (that was 71% run). Chip Kelly used a dizzying array of variety in the number of ways he attacked the ground game and attacked the edges far more than has been typical for UCLA this year.

This week the Outside Zone Read was a huge feature after being all but ignored the entire season. OZRs were used 13 times in the three nonconference games, 12 times before USC in Pac-12 play (that’s across 7 games), and now 12 times specifically against USC. The USC results tell us exactly why Chip Kelly may be hesitant to consistently rely upon the current incarnation of the OZR play; it’s a real feast or famine call. When compared to the other basic run constructions (IZR and Non-Mesh), OZR had by far the biggest upside on production (10.0 YPP), but was the lowest performing in terms of success rate (42%) against USC. It succeeds less often (because it’s easy for defenses to diagnose), but when it works, it’s a blur style demoralizing chunk play.

Outside Zone Read was better going left than to the right by a factor of four both in terms of production (15.8 YPP left) and success rate (67% success left). I don’t think this means you can easily conclude that LT Andrew James and LG Michael Alves are outperforming RG Christaphany Murray and RT Jake Burton. I counted at least three flavors of O-line blocking assignments on OZRs vs USC: an unbalanced sweep (more on that later), a balanced sweep (C and a G pulling), and a traditional fishduck-defined blur approach (no pulling, just the line moving together). There are a ton of moving parts in Chip’s OZR scheme, and right now it’s working when the ball moves left.

We can defend the right side of the line with their success rate on non-mesh runs to the right side at 67%. It’s worth noting the non-mesh right run production (6.7 YPP) was a fair bit worse than the non-mesh left run production (14.6 YPP), but I’ll take success rate every time. Non-mesh runs up the middle (2.9 YPP / 33% success) and IZRs (3.7 YPP / 54% success) (also generally up the middle) are a necessary threat with lesser production.

There was also a lot of “arc” motion by Theo Howard, Christian Pabico, and Devin Asiasi that kept the defense moving and having to communicate as the ball was being snapped.