{"id":36091,"date":"2021-05-20T13:00:13","date_gmt":"2021-05-20T17:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/?p=36091"},"modified":"2021-05-19T21:11:02","modified_gmt":"2021-05-20T01:11:02","slug":"36091-uclas-justin-frye-says-training-camp-is-fun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/2021\/05\/20\/36091-uclas-justin-frye-says-training-camp-is-fun\/","title":{"rendered":"UCLA’s Justin Frye Says Training Camp Is Fun"},"content":{"rendered":"

No matter how tedious Spring camp can be with all the repetition and extra work, UCLA\u2019s Justin Frye<\/strong> swears this is fun. The UCLA assistant throws out a lot of similes and mixed metaphors in explaining what is going on in preparation for the 2021 season. Frye preaches fundamentals, even to his veteran offensive line. But at the end of the conversation on any topic regarding UCLA football Frye puts in the effort to convince you how much fun this is.<\/p>\n

UCLA’s Justin Frye Says Training Camp Is Fun<\/h2>\n

Frye came to UCLA in 2018 as the offensive line coach, after five years in the same position as Boston College. After just one season he was promoted to offensive coordinator. It is a different role at UCLA. This is still and will always be head coach Chip Kelly\u2019s<\/strong> offense to manage from soup to nuts.<\/p>\n

While Kelly may be the guiding force of the offense, Frye is the guy working with him in the schemes and making sure everyone on the offense is in sync. And for him, it all starts up front with the offense line. It is a natural place for a guy who was an offensive tackle at Indiana from 2002-2006.<\/p>\n

When asked what it\u2019s like to have so much returning depth on the offensive line, Frye says, \u201cIt\u2019s fun.\u201d If the subject is the development of some of the younger linemen, Frye talks about accelerating their growth, and says, \u201cIt\u2019s fun.\u201d Ask him about slapping hands with players on both sides of the ball during stretching, and he says, “It’s fun.”<\/p>\n

Polishing Tools And Lessons Learned<\/h3>\n

That\u2019s not to say there is not serious work going on.<\/a> \u201cThis is Spring football,\u201d Frye said. \u201cThis is where you polish your tools and put them in the toolbox so that in the Fall, when you show up and you\u2019re playing a certain front or a certain stunt, I\u2019ve got a lot of bank in that. Let me pull out the screwdriver. I need the screwdriver, not the allen wrench.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whatever tools he may be reaching for, he has plenty of them. UCLA has the college football rarity of having all of its starting offensive line and all of last season\u2019s reserves returning. To those not in Frye\u2019s position, that might seem to make life a little easier on a coach. Frye, however, admits to having made mistakes with seasoned offensive line units. He says he mistakenly changed his coaching methods in the past when he had a veteran line. \u201cIn my past, as a younger guy, I\u2019ve done that, and I failed miserably.\u201d He said he was guilty of trying to accelerate the learning curve too much with a returning group and got away from fundamentals. \u201cBecause they start getting enamored with all the bells and the whistles and at the end of the day, it\u2019s the gears and the basics that makes everything go.\u201d<\/p>\n

As much as the attention goes on senior quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson<\/a>, the stable of running backs, or the depth at receiver, Frye says none of it matters without the offensive line maintaining the fundamentals. \u201cChip\u2019s never drawn a play on the board where you go, \u2018Wow. This play stinks.\u2019 They\u2019re all good plays,\u201d Frye said. \u201cBut they\u2019re only good if the five guys up front allow the quarterback to get the ball delivered somewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

Making Bank Deposits<\/h3>\n

He acknowledged that the line, and the offense as a whole, is further along in Spring because of their experience. \u201cThey\u2019re further ahead because of the bank of what the guys know,\u201d as Frye puts the toolbox aside and opens his financial institution when he talks about adding on to the fundamentals. \u201cYou know, you\u2019re putting that money in the bank. And at some point, the dividends are going to come back because you\u2019re invested in the right stuff. You\u2019re putting in the right savings account. I think when you get more veteran guys, you don\u2019t skip over the core stuff. You get really detailed with the core stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

And you know where that gets you? \u201cWhen you get a team like that and you can coach them that way, it\u2019s fun. It\u2019s really fun to work with these guys,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Making The Band<\/h3>\n

There is another upside to all of it the experience. Familiarity. Quarterbacks may have timing down with each receiver. But they also have to have confidence that the line in front of them is in unison. \u201cYou look up and you got five big asses in front of you, and you feel comfortable with them, then the quarterback is probably going to play pretty good,\u201d he said. This is not a toolbox, nor is it a financial institution. This, in the Frye vernacular, is a musical group. \u201cIt\u2019s like a band,\u201d Frye said. It is less about timing. \u201cIt\u2019s rhythmic. Where are we blocking? Who do we have? Who does he have? Let\u2019s go to work. You can get into a good flow that way. It\u2019s more rhythm there than timing.\u201d<\/p>\n

This takes him back to the importance of the fundamentals and the reps, which he acknowledges could actually be boring. \u201cIf we, (offensive linemen), were just lining up athletically, we\u2019re the least athletes on the field,\u201d Frye said. \u00a0\u201cSo, a lot of reps, a lot of time, a lot of training, and just trusting the technique. Because your technique is always going to take you home. I don\u2019t care what position you play.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fun For Both Sides<\/h3>\n

It feels like it is important to Frye that he makes sure he is clear. He is an equal opportunist when it comes to the fun. He cheers on the guys going up against his offensive line as well. \u201cThey go as we go. We go as they go,\u201d Frye said. \u201cYou can\u2019t coach a guy really hard if the only time you are coaching him is when he feels like it\u2019s something [being] corrected. Now flip that to the other side. Otito (Ogbonnia), can\u2019t look at me and be like, \u2018Oh, that\u2019s the o-line guy who is trying to defeat me.\u2019\u201d He said he makes sure and celebrates the, \u201cfun,\u201d with players on both side at camp and that he, Frye, is invested, as much as the players.<\/p>\n

The fun goes on both sides of the ball.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No matter how tedious Spring camp can be with all the repetition and extra work, UCLA\u2019s Justin Frye swears this is fun. The UCLA assistant throws out a lot of similes and mixed metaphors in explaining what is going on in preparation for the 2021 season. Frye preaches fundamentals, even to his veteran offensive line. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1534,"featured_media":36094,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4,1],"tags":[2539,4212,7614],"class_list":["post-36091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-pac12","category-uncategorized","tag-chip-kelly","tag-justin-frye","tag-spring-football-2021"],"modified_by":"Tony Siracusa, CFB Managing Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36091\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}