A bye week in college football usually presents great opportunities for a team. There are coaches out on the recruiting trail. The players are working on the finer points of their game while not having to go through specific opponent prep. And the whole program generally gets to take a deep breath. A bye week is tough for UCLA right now.
This is the second bye week for the Bruins. They got one earlier in the season as the payoff for playing Hawai’i in week zero. UCLA gets to sit on its 5-4 record, to go with the 3-3 conference mark.
A Bye Week With Lingering Issues
UCLA was eliminated from the Pac-12 South race last week in Salt Lake City. Head coach Chip Kelly is under more public scrutiny for another disappointing season. His defensive coordinator, Jerry Azzinaro, is catching media flack, including in this space, not only for having a porous defense for the last four years but for refusing to publicly address the issues.
The time off is both fortuitous and poorly timed. The team gets time to regroup before heading into the last three games of the season, all against beatable opponents. Conversely the fan base is still tasting the blowout loss to Utah and the deceptively close score in the loss to Oregon. UCLA played its two best opponents of the year with the conference race on the line. They came up empty both times. They got outscored 34-3 in a two-and-a-half quarter stretch against the Ducks. The next week they couldn’t match the physicality of the Utes in a 20-point loss.
Quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson gets more time for his throwing hand to heal. He was throwing Wednesday at practice without any plainly visible wrap on the injured hand that kept him out of the Utah game. With UCLA having only two full contact practices this week, the rest of the team gets some time to get over aches and pains that exist everywhere nine games into the season.
Recruiting Time
Usually a bye week would be a significant recruiting opportunity. Kelly said this week, the bye comes unfortunately late in the season. The high school playoffs are underway in every state. That is great if the recruit is playing on a playoff team. But some states are already weeks into the post-season. If a recruit’s team has been eliminated from the playoffs or never made it, there are no more chances to see those players in live action. “If there’s one or two kids you want to see, they may not be practicing now. Their season may be done,” Kelly said this week.
“I know in California the first round of the CIF’s starts this week. So if there is a team you were looking at or wanted to go see a player, but his team didn’t qualify for the playoffs, then he’s not practicing this week. So now when you go to the evaluation at the school, you’re not watching the kid doing athletic evaluations. You’re picking up transcripts and talking to all the coaches, and the teachers, and the guidance counselors at the school,” he said.
Time To Rethink That Strategy
Having a break now also means Kelly and his staff don’t have a game to help cleanse the pallet of what was a challenging week from a PR standpoint. Kelly’s future at UCLA grows more tenuous with each loss. Add to that, he is having to carry the weight of a statistically poor defense, because Azzinaro will not. Assistant coaches at UCLA have a clause in their contracts regarding reasonable media availability. Apparently not speaking to the media for four years is considered reasonable for Azzinaro and his bosses. Kelly made it clear in a very awkward press meeting Wednesday that he will not compel Azzinaro to answer for the substandard defensive play of the last four years.
The quotes about free choice and living in America that Kelly used to justify his decision regarding Azzinaro drew wide criticism from fans when they hit print and the digital media world Wednesday afternoon. There are a couple of things that help change the bad vibe around the football program. One is that the tremendously popular and successful men’s and women’s basketball programs are starting this week. Mick Cronin and Cori Close are riding a successful wave that helps take some of the focus off the football morass right now.
Wins Are The Thing
The other thing that changes the storyline is winning. When the Bruins get back to real game prep next week, they are looking ahead to a bad Colorado team. The Buffaloes are 2-6 overall and 1-4 in the Pac-12. They face a vastly improved Oregon State team this week. The odds that they will be even worse off before facing the Bruins next week is very high.
Expectations for the crowd turnout at the Rose Bowl are not as high. UCLA tarped over the top portion of the north end zone seats prior to the start of the season. They were rarely occupied, and it made for a poor visual on television. There is no official revised capacity provided, but reasonable estimates are in the 70,000 range. The Bruins are averaging only about 49,600 per game this season. The high-water mark was the LSU game in week two back when the nation thought the Tigers were a good team. The nadir was the season opener against Hawai’i, that drew less than 33,000. All of the standard obstacles expressed by fans for not going were clear. It was a midday game. It was hot. Hawai’i was/is a bad team.
The Colorado game is at 6pm next Saturday. It won’t be hot. But it will be two teams currently reeling, so not much of a draw. The Bruins have no margin for error left. Three wins in the remaining three games gets them to 8-4 and maybe a boost up to the Las Vegas Bowl. Anything less than that and they are probably looking at the Jimmy Kimmel Bowl a whopping 13 miles away at SoFi Stadium. Kelly has no margin left either. The eight wins may or may not be enough for him to see his fifth year at UCLA, along with a one or two year contract extension. If the Bruins only qualify for the Jimmy Kimmel Bowl, they may be playing in a bowl game with an interim coach for the fifth time in 21 years.
