UCLA Football: Weekly variations in the 2018 offense

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(Photo by Jennifer Stewart/Getty Images) /

Gimmick Personnel Groups

We’ve previously established that 11 and 12 personnel are the bread and butter of this offense which gives the most flexibility and provides little pre-snap information to an opposing defensive coordinator. The change-up personnel of 21 (2 RB, 1 TE) and 22 (2 RB, 2 TE), 10 (1 RB, 0 TE, 4 WR), and 13 (1 RB, 3 TE, 1 WR) were a mixed bag of results.

13 Personnel was the third most used and most successful personnel group, but got a disproportionate amount of attention in sports media late in the season. It was only used significantly (with very favorable success) in four games (Cal, Arizona St, USC, and Stanford). If you hear or read anyone suggesting that 13 personnel is a foundational part of UCLA’s “pro style” offense, I would counter that it wasn’t really used in 8 of their 12 games. It’s a great situational tool as an anti-spread concept for spread tuned defenses, and may see increased use in the upcoming season though.

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The four-wide 10 personnel was probably not used a whole lot in 2018 because of the availability of elite talent TE Caleb Wilson. Since Wilson was easily their best pass catcher, it didn’t make a lot of sense to ever pull him off the field in favor of a less skilled fourth WR. This is to say that they could get all of the upside of wide spread 10 personnel (and none of the pre-snap tell downside) using 11 personnel where Caleb Wilson was essentially playing WR. For some reason, they used a bunch of 10 personnel against Colorado as an outlier (Wilson wasn’t injured or benched, he had 6 catches for 49 yards).

Let’s assume this was a deliberate altitude strategy to spread playing time around and rest TE’s with the goal of a strong finish. In 2019, UCLA hosts Colorado but plays at Utah; something to keep an eye on for that Utah game week. It’s also to be determined if the top pass catching TE (Devin Asiasi) will be among the strongest 4 pass catchers on the team in obvious passing downs. If he isn’t, there may be a general increase in the usage of 10 personnel in 2019.

It’s worth noting that while many early season elements made appearances, disappeared, and then came back: only 2 RB personnel got introduced and then completely shelved as the season progressed. Chip used 2 RB personnel often enough in the Oregon Blur. It puts tremendous pressure on a defense to spread out with RBs slotted wide or running motion. 2RB personnel got used a lot against Fresno State in week 3 with very little success (27% success rate), which seemed to be the thing that killed it off for 2018. I’m going to hope that Bolu Olorunfunmi and Soso Jamabo got all of the install time for this personnel group, and it had to be abandoned due to their season ending injuries. I can’t fathom that it was Kelly’s plan for UCLA to eschew 2RB personnel.

Sideline Checks

The new thing to say about sideline checks in this context, is how they were part of a larger narrative of increasing scheme complexity that was executed properly. While the players obviously struggled at times to get the sight lines to the sideline, I don’t think there was a single side line check procedure goof the whole season. The players didn’t false start on any fake claps, and as far as I can tell always executed the same common play call. This is a representation of a Kelly philosophy to practice until you can’t get it wrong (as opposed to only practicing until you get it right). The holding of these sideline checks until halfway through the season shows the methodical nature of Chip’s quality control. One must conclude that if they had deployed it in games sooner, we would have seen execution mistakes.