UCLA Football: Summarizing Chip Kelly’s 2018 offensive scheme

Other Elements Chip Could Incorporate Next Year

Just to make the off-season wait a little more unbearable, here are a few fun concepts I’ve run across that would make a great flavor of the week or month for this offense.  My goal, of course, is to predict all possibilities and then later claim predictive power.

• 30 Personnel (3 RB, 0 TE, 2 WR) – Kelley, Irby, Allen on the field together with tons of branching possibilities
• WR pitch with counter/sweep blocking
• More consistent use of the Arc read concept (motion man lead blocks for QB keep).  Here’s a 2nd NFL example.  And also a detailed write up is here.
• Double Pistol or RBs out wide with trips and stack formations for really wide screen passes
• My running gag of the season, diamond or full house pistol (twitter thread has tons of examples of college and NFL).  Detailed write up here.
• More Conventional option which UCLA tried one time this year and lined up wrong.
• 2017 Boston College on offense lined up initially with the RB behind in a pistol alignment most of the time, and then shifted pre-snap into a hybrid alignment.  I think this was to mask the IZR play direction until the very last second.  There’s at least some possibility Justin Frye would want to bring this in if it worked for them.

Put a Name on it

It’s not the Blur, it’s not Scott Frost 2017 UCF, it’s not Chip Kelly: NFL edition. BRO/David Woods want to call it “the Clap” (based upon the sideline Check-With-Me clap).  The B team suggests calling it the Omnivore (because bruin bears will eat anything just like this offense samples from all over). Another food option would be the Buffet Offense or the Sampler Platter. My gamers out there would understand why calling it the Katamari or Mega Man might make sense.

Wrap Up

I had the honor of going on both the What’s Bruin Show and UCLA B Team in the last few weeks covering a lot of this ground.  Thanks once again to all you guys for having me! Talking through some of this out loud helped me work out some conclusions I might not have otherwise arrived at.

The google doc linked here has every UCLA 2018 offense play logged with the situation, pre-snap details, and post snap results. I like to look for how the situation and pre-snap looks inform play calling and results.

We’ll do it all over again in 2019 (including any spring game).  My hope is that readers look at it and find stuff along with me (something pre-snap is a tell, something else very successful). This post introduces how my writing has context for everything in the log.