UCLA Football: Where does the offense go from here? Recap and outlook

Where does the offense go from here? (cont.)

With a game plan that heavily relied on the run, depsite Kelly looking to pass the ball more with Speight in the game, UCLA ran all over the Trojans. UCLA ran the ball 64% of the time (second highest since Cal, 71%), so you can see that a dedicated Kelly run game can do some damage. UCLA put everything on the Trojans: outside zone read, inside zone read, non-mesh runs, options… Kelly kept it fresh. Aside from the outside zone read, every run play was successful.

We also saw Kelly bust out the unbalanced offensive line formation which, as previously stated, overloaded one side of the line. What did this result in? Joshua Kelley running for 289 yards on USC. With UCLA pulling guards to the play side, Kelley was able to find several open holes which lead to big runs of 55 and 61 yards. It was the most rushing yards any player has ever put up in the crosstown rivalry. The run game had arrived with an exclamation point. UCLA had their third win of the season heading into the finale against Stanford.

That game was different. Kelly said that he saw Stanford stack the box and was dedicated to stopping the run, which explains why Kelley only had 55 rushing yards and the offense as a whole collected 62 total. Sure, that might seem bad, but not when you consider Wilton Speight threw for 466 yards, giving UCLA a grand total of 528, the most they were able to put on an opponent this season. UCLA also scored 42 points, another first for 2018.

If UCLA showed they can run against USC, they showed they can pass against Stanford, both good signs going forward.