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UCLA Football: Summarizing Chip Kelly’s 2018 offensive scheme

By Chris Osgood

PASADENA, CA - SEPTEMBER 15: Head coach Chip Kelly and Ethan Young watch warm ups before the game against the Fresno State Bulldogs at Rose Bowl on September 15, 2018 in Pasadena, California. (Photo by Harry How/Getty Images)
PASADENA, CA - SEPTEMBER 15: Head coach Chip Kelly and Ethan Young watch warm ups before the game against the Fresno State Bulldogs at Rose Bowl on September 15, 2018 in Pasadena, California. (Photo by Harry How/Getty Images) /
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(Photo by Victor Decolongon/Getty Images)
(Photo by Victor Decolongon/Getty Images) /

There are no designed QB draw plays in the playbook

Those empty backfield QB runs (seen a lot by Texas’ Sam Ehlinger and UCF’s McKenzie Milton for example) are not risk worth taking according to a post-NFL Chip Kelly.  The QBs seem coached to only keep the ball when the read is extremely favorable. Anything borderline or questionable gets handed to the RB.  This is a great example of how modern defenses play the zone read to force hand-offs.  (watch how the Right Defensive End on the offense left just sits and waits for the mesh to finish).  If I was a defensive coordinator, I would present a read that makes the QB keep so that I could hit the QB as much as possible.

This is probably one of the many reasons why I am not a defensive coordinator. QBs ran the ball on only 28 called run plays (almost always) after a zone read mesh. Those QB option-keeps into free space achieved 4.8 YPP and were 61% successful. DTR had 17 non-pass play runs (4.9 YPP 59% successful) and Speight had 11 (4.6 YPP and 64% successful) – so Speight was a little more effective while DTR was a little more explosive.  The notable thing here is they both lost time due to injuries from called pass plays (Speight a scramble, DTR a sack).  Their exposure in the running game was limited, and we should expect that to be true for Chip’s entire tenure.

Tempo

Tempo is available, but not compulsory like it was with Blur or UCLA under Noel Mazzone.  Sometimes when UCLA was going slower, they would still line up quickly and force the defense to get set before a sideline check. This slow pace might be a season-specific adaptation due to the limited number of bodies available on defense. The Blur defense shuffled bodies in and out to account for offense’s pace.

Noel Mazzone’s inability to slow down cost UCLA a handful of games (and his job) while he was UCLA’s OC, and in part enabled the 34-point UCLA come back against Texas A&M when he was their OC.  If Chip chose to slow the offense down this year based on a whole team concept, this is good for two reasons.  First, it means the offense will get speedier as the number of playable bodies on defense increases.  Second, it shows a mastery of the larger picture that the prior staff may have lacked.