Go Joe Bruin takes a look at several college football publication’s win projections for the UCLA football team heading into the 2019 season.
It is the off-season, which means it’s time to speculate, speculate, and speculate some more. With just under two months until the beginning of the season, major publications have already given their predictions and projections for the 2019 season, and that includes the enigma that is the UCLA football team.
RELATED: UCLA Football’s Recent Commits Change the Narrative About Recruiting
We looked at several college football publications to see what they believe the Bruins will do in year two of the Chip Kelly era. After a 3-9 season, one would expect minimal improvement, but several have the Bruins winning more than double the number of games from last season.
Athlon: 5.5 wins
Athlon acknowledges that there was a lot of hype with Chip Kelly coming into the program, which could eventually lead to success, but also references the fact that the team was in bad shape when he took over. Though hope springs eternal for 2019, it’s not a surprise that Athlon sees only minimal improvement from UCLA. This is not necessarily a bad thing as they do see progress, but I can understand why they would be cautious and project only 5.5 wins for the season.
College Football News: 7.5 wins
CFN acknowledges that UCLA has another tough schedule to navigate through, but they are confident that they will make significant improvements and build off of what they started last season. The projected 7.5 wins seem like a safe number, albeit high to some, but it’s not the highest predicted amount of wins that we’ve seen. Case in point…
ESPN: 7.8 wins
For being the most prominent publication on this list, it says something about what the outside perception of UCLA is. It is a bit surprising to see the Bruins so high on ESPN’s Football Power Index, but looking at UCLA’s trajectory, it is not hard to fathom.
Go Joe Bruin: 7.0 wins
Yes, I looked at my article, which I believe is fairly unbiased (as much as it could be). The offense got better as the season went on and should be the driving force behind the Bruins’ garnering more success next fall.
Fansided: 5.0 wins
FanSided believes that UCLA will improve, but only slightly. They have the Bruins dropping games to Arizona and USC, which does not bode well for UCLA in their eyes.
Saturday Blitz: 10.0 wins
You read that correctly. Saturday Blitz has the Bruins bouncing back in a big way with a 10-win season. Even as a UCLA fan, that seems hard to conceive, but it is good to know that certain outlets think highly of the Bruins. So highly that they have the Bruins losing to only Oklahoma, Washington State and Utah. Yes, that means they have UCLA finally taking down Stanford.
SB Nation: 4.9 wins
Bill Connelly, formerly of SB Nation, wrote about the Bruins before heading over to ESPN and is confident the Bruins will improve in the second Chip Kelly season, but not by much. He has UCLA favored only four games, including a not-so-given 52% chance of victory against San Diego State. That tells you what he thinks of the rebuild. Essentially, in his eyes, this is not (yet) UCLA’s season.