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UCLA Football: Weekly variations in the 2018 offense

By Chris Osgood

NORMAN, OK - SEPTEMBER 08: Head coach Chip Kelly of the UCLA Bruins during the game against the Oklahoma Sooners at Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium on September 8, 2018 in Norman, Oklahoma. The Sooners defeated the Bruins 49-21. (Photo by Brett Deering/Getty Images)
NORMAN, OK - SEPTEMBER 08: Head coach Chip Kelly of the UCLA Bruins during the game against the Oklahoma Sooners at Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium on September 8, 2018 in Norman, Oklahoma. The Sooners defeated the Bruins 49-21. (Photo by Brett Deering/Getty Images) /
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(Photo by Matthew Stockman/Getty Images)
(Photo by Matthew Stockman/Getty Images) /

Tight WR and 2 QBs

Tight WRs and 2 QB personnel represent trend chasing and innovation respectively. I like that Kelly has the humility to incorporate approaches that are working elsewhere (tight formations), while also showing the ability to try something totally out of left field (2 QBs). They both showed up on the scene late in the season and didn’t really make a significant impact, but signal that we shouldn’t stop expecting fun new variations every week of every future season.

What does this mean for 2019?

If they start out with 5-6 identifiable variations from the basic scheme in week 1, this will show that Kelly has confidence in the deployment of his system and the players. In this case, we should expect complexity to increase from there and quickly exceed the 2018 end point.

If they start out with very few wrinkles in week 1, this could go either way. It could be a signal that Kelly has no confidence in the players ability to flawlessly execute the complexity. This would be a real problem. It could alternatively be a deliberate slow build up that will evolve deliberately throughout the length of the season. In any case, we’ll get our first bread crumbs in just a few weeks with the Spring game.

Next. The 30 Greatest UCLA Football Players of All-Time. dark

ICYMI

  • This was a fun (and pretty basic) video breakdown I did of a 13 Tackle-Over tendency breaker that UCLA used against Stanford.
  • This snack sized ten minute podcast gives a really tight explanation of zone vs gap blocking technique and how it relates to what QB and RB are doing. There are also some really great terminology definitions that I will likely adopt. Highly recommended.  I suggested a couple of podcast topics to him on twitter and he responded that he would add them to his queue (why not play fake on every pass play, and trade-offs between under center, pistol, shotgun).