UCLA Football: 2018 coaching/position grades via the B-Team Podcast

Hanna: It’s hard to say because so many true freshmen worked in at his position. Theo, obviously, took a leap this season; that was extremely impressive. Chase Cota and Michael Ezeike got better as the season went along.

And then the problem was that one, the drop issue wasn’t really solved for everybody except for Theo Howard, unfortunately. And that might have just been guys playing out of position, guys like Demetric Felton, for example. Demetric Felton was a running back coming out of high school, so he wasn’t meant to play wide receiver, and he was actually meant to be a hybrid RB/slot receiver under what Mora envisioned the offense to become, and that’s what he was sold on. So to move to wide receiver was a bit unfair to him, in my opinion, actually. He’s not a running back in college but he’s not a wide receiver either.

Eberhardt: There was one point where he caught a touchdown after having dropped a couple, and I tweeted out, ‘Oh, Demetric Felton catches a touchdown because variety is the spice of life.’ Apparently, he thought he’d try something new.

Hanna: He had that brutal drop against Utah that destroyed our chances of going into halftime of that game keeping it competitive. He is playing out of position; he’s kind of a tweener. He’s that kind of guy you need to get creative with in order to get him the ball.

But personnel usage, overall, was where I kind of differed with him a little bit. B- or B. Something like that.

Eberhardt: Okay. You’re a little more generous than I am. I’m going to say C to C+. Drops were still widely an issue. We didn’t see a huge step forward for anyone but Theo. The two things I liked were his development and that when freshmen came in they tended to acquit themselves well. They would make some mistakes, but it was not like he was flooding the field with players completely in over their heads. The development of the freshmen was promising, but that’s about as far as it goes.

Hanna: Coming into the season,  I was looking forward to seeing guys like Dymond Lee and Audie Omotosho more than we did. Dymond Lee did get a lot of playing time; he just didn’t flash the way I expected him to. I’d also heard good things about the physical testing of Audie Omotosho, the four-star receiver from Texas who just hasn’t gotten as much playing time as I thought. He just hasn’t found his breakthrough in the program, and getting buried behind Michael Ezeike and Chase Cota isn’t going to do it for him either. Ezeike definitely came on as the season went on. He had flashes at the beginning of the season, but he got more and more reliable.

Dougherty is in that C+/B- range. I think B- is about right from where I’m sitting, and I think that a C+ or a C, even, is defensible as well if you’re grading a little bit harshly.