Looking back on UCLA's 2025 season as UCLA moves to 0-4 but shows improvement

UCLA played their fourth game of the season in a matchup with Northwestern. After starting the season 0-3 and relieving their head coach DeShaun Foster of his duties. The team looked to create a spark under interim head coach Tim Skipper. UCLA was underdogs by 7.5 points. But it was seen as a winnable game possibly. Depending on which team would show up would we get the offseason hopefuls or the team that was struggling to tackle on defense or create any consistency on offense?

UCLA actually played their best defensive game of the season up to that point. Only giving up 17 points on the day. Unfortunately, their offense was only able to score 14 points themselves. Losing 17-14 on the day and moving to 0-4 on the season. With a lot of questions to be answered, amidst an interim head coach that was about to make some big changes. Including new minds calling the plays on both sides of the ball.

UCLA went down 17-0 in this game and tried to climb back late but were not able too. They had now played 240 minutes of football on the season and not led for a single second of that time. They got better at limiting mistakes. As they had 60 penalty yards. Which is still a lot, but it was much better than 125 yards per game they were averaging the previous two games. They were also being gashed on the running game. As they gave up another 199 rushing yards in this game.

The pass defense started to show their signs of improvement by only giving up 115 yards through the air. Their past defense was one of the few positives they had in 2025. On offense Nico Iamaleava was on the run for his life most of the game again. As he ran for 65 yards leading the way for the Bruins while having 180 yards through the air. It is not talked about enough the pressures that he dealt with in 2025 and didn’t make any issue about it. He showed up every week and competed as hard as he could.