UCLA’s home stretch for the 2021 season starts this week. Nothing much is riding on it except the fate of potential post-season play, Chip Kelly’s first winning season at UCLA, the end of the line for the huge number of seniors on the team, and the fate of the coaching staff. Other than that, it’s just another three games.
The First Step
UCLA faces Colorado at 6 pm at the Rose Bowl. Expectations for fanfare as the season winds down are minimal. UCLA is 5-4 overall and 3-3 in conference play. But the Bruins essentially played their way out of the Pac-12 South race with back-to-back losses to Oregon and Utah. When the highest of highs was at stake, the team and the staff didn’t deliver. Technically they can still win the division race. But they would need Utah and Arizona State to lose out. The odds are the slimmest of slim. Colorado is 3-6 overall and 2-4 in conference play. The crowd size Saturday is likely to draw comparisons to the season opener against Hawai’i. That came in just shy of 33,000.
Colorado has struggled most of the season. The Buffaloes have had two high points this year. One was losing to Texas A&M by only three points early in the season. Considering the Aggies are a Top 11 team, it looks like an even better loss today than it did back then. The other pinnacle, if you can call them that in a bad season, was last week’s 37-34 win over Oregon State in double overtime.
Colorado’s young offense finally began to look like what some had been waiting for all year. Running back Jarek Broussard rush for 151 yards on 24 carries. Quarterback Brendon Lewis has struggled statistically much of the season. But last Saturday he was 15 of 24 passing for 170 yards and three touchdowns. He now gets to play a UCLA pass defense which has ranked in the bottom third of the country for the last four years.
UCLA’s Defensive Challenges
Kelly called Lewis, “A very athletic kid.” He added, “They’re starting to figure it out,” with regards to the Colorado offense. He said with both Lewis and Broussard being threats on the ground, “You’ve got to be really disciplined in terms of how you are attacking them.” That has not worked well for UCLA’s defense in the last two games. The Bruins gave up 121 yards rushing to Oregon, but that included four touchdown runs by Travis Dye. That was followed the following week by a staggering 290 rushing yards and five rushing touchdowns given up to Utah in a 20-point loss. A UCLA defense that was once top 10 in the country against the run has dropped to 19th in the last couple of weeks. The pass defense is still 120th in the country out of 130 teams.
To Bye Or Not To Bye
The Bruins are coming off a bye week. Whether the late-season bye was good for the team or not depends on whom you ask. Some of the players who were a little banged up got some extra healing time. That includes quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson who sat out against Utah with an injured throwing hand. On the other hand, the malaise that comes with the back-to-back losses continued to hover over the program because there was no new game to erase the fog.
Defensive back Qwuantrezz Knight said he would have liked to have been playing. “Definitely just because of the last two losses you would want to get that taste out of your mouth, you know as quick as possible,” he said. He also acknowledged that it allowed some of the players to get healthy.
Thompson-Robinson said the time to heal helped him be ready for Colorado. “The bye week came at a pretty good time. I got a full two weeks off, not having to use my hand or anything.” He said it felt, “pretty good,” in the first full day of practice Monday in preparation for Colorado.
DTR’s Hand
He also answered the “mysterious question” Kelly refused to address after the Utah game. When was the decision made not to start Thompson-Robinson in Salt Lake City? After the game, Kelly gave some circuitous answers as to discussions with doctors throughout the week. Thompson-Robinson said Monday that after the Oregon game, in which he injured his thumb late in the fourth quarter, he had x-rays taken.
He did not specify what the results were, but he told the media he alerted backup Ethan Garbers that he needed to be sure he was ready to go. Thompson-Robinson was throwing on the field before the Utah game but did not look comfortable. “Leading up to the game and throwing in warm-ups a little bit, it just didn’t feel 100% or at least close to 100% enough to where I could give the team the best chance to win and you know at the end of the day, that’s my job,” he said.
Thompson-Robinson said the right thumb is not completely healed, “But it’s definitely better than it was two weeks ago.” He was seen throwing at practice Monday with no protection or wrap on the hand anymore.
Not Much Riding On This, Other Than Everything
The Bruins could win all three of the remaining games. Three wins would upgrade them from the low-tier bowl games for which they are currently being penciled in. The forecast is pretty clear. Win all three and you get probably get the Holiday Bowl in San Diego. Win two of the three and the Las Vegas Bowl is the likely destination. If they win only one of the three, go 6-6, and the Jimmy Kimmel Bowl in Los Angeles is the best you can hope for.
The better the bowl, the higher the financial payout for the program. The better bowls are also later in the month, allowing the coaching staff to schedule in a solid two more weeks of practice. A veteran team like this should not need the extra work. But the younger players who will be filling the holes left by the departure of 20+ players next year could use the extra practice. And then there are the “little things” like the future direction of the program and who is guiding that future. Other than that, it’s just another three games left on the calendar.
