UCLA Football: Inside the Bruins' Second-Half Resurgence
A win over Stanford for No. 8-ranked UCLA Friday is one big step toward the Bruins completing a remarkable resurgence.
Beating the Cardinal gives the Bruins their second Pac-12 South title in three years under head coach Jim Mora, as well as a berth in the conference championship game.
That’s been the team’s goal all along, according to Mora.
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It’s been a long march for UCLA, going from a series of narrow escapes and back-to-back Pac-12 losses, to being in the conference and national title conversations.
It’s a path not unlike that Stanford head coach David Shaw’s team walked in 2012. The Cardinal rallied from a similar 4-2 start to win their final eight, including the Pac-12 Championship Game against UCLA.
“Just about every team, you face some kind of adversity early in the year,” Shaw said. “Sometimes it’s just a close game you end up winning and sometimes it’s just a loss.”
UCLA was on both ends of that spectrum, narrowly escaping nonconference games against Virginia, Memphis and Texas by a combined 18 points before losing on a late field goal to Utah.
“Sometimes it’s just not playing up to your ability,” Shaw added.
The Bruins endured that, too, frankly failing to live up to the lofty potential so many touted in the buildup to the 2014 campaign.
But with five straight wins—including two over Top 20 opponents this month—UCLA is playing up to its ability.
Not only is it one win from the Pac-12 Championship Game, but UCLA is also just a few breaks from making the inaugural College Football Playoff.
The Turning Point
Tell someone in July that UCLA would find itself in this position on Thanksgiving weekend and you might get a disinterested shrug.
After all, the Bruins were overwhelming South Division favorites in the media day's preseason poll.
But say the same thing in mid-October, and the reaction may be considerably different.
Rewind to Oct. 11: The Bruins were losers of two straight Pac-12 contests and were only truly impressive in one of their four wins, beating Arizona State 62-27 with a second-string quarterback behind center.
Oregon came into the Rose Bowl and immediately asserted its dominance, leading by as much as 32 points en route to a 42-30 final.
Some of the same pundits who touted UCLA as championship material in the summer were writing the eulogy on the team’s season.
“That was definitely the turning point of our season,” linebacker Eric Kendricks said. “We had to rally together as a team and decided what we wanted our season to [be].”
UCLA hit rock bottom, falling out of the rankings with questions abound—questions such as:
Why is the defense generating so few sacks? A team that was among the Pac-12’s best at getting to opposing quarterbacks in the previous two seasons had done so just seven times to that point.
Why is the offense giving up so many sacks? After the Oregon game, UCLA had allowed 23, 10 of which contributed to the loss against Utah.
And why are the Bruins falling shy of expectations?
Such tough questions could have led to internal conflict, thereby begetting more losses.
“We could have easily went down the tank and said, ‘Hey, we lost two games. Our season expectations are over with,’” Kendricks said.
Instead, the Bruins collectively rallied around their leaders—those both on the sideline and on the field.
“Natural Maturation”
A billboard featuring UCLA quarterback Brett Hundley and the words, “Passing Zone Ahead” greeted drivers at the merge point between freeways 110 and 405 in Los Angeles—one of the busiest stretches of road in America.
Lauded as a Heisman Trophy contender from the moment he announced his return last January, Hundley is the face of the 2014 Bruins.
Thus, it’s no wonder Hundley was peppered with questions about the Bruins’ disappointing start after the Oregon loss.
“The one positive thing is we can learn from this,” Hundley said confidently in the postgame fray following that contest. “We can’t be a team that gets down ourselves.”
Of equally little surprise is that UCLA has seemingly taken cues from Hundley.
His play was fine for the first six games. But with the prospect of the 2015 NFL draft and first-round potential lingering over him, Hundley often looked tense.
But in describing his rebound from throwing an opening-drive pick-six against rival USC, Hundley touched on the mindset that’s carried him to an excellent second half of this year.
“You can’t be afraid to make mistakes,” he said.
Not that Hundley’s made many: He’s thrown just five interceptions all season, and his 72 percent completion rating is tops among all Football Bowl Subdivision quarterbacks.
But Hundley is playing less to avoid errors and more within the flow of the game.
“You see the natural maturation of a great athlete becoming a really, really good quarterback,” Shaw said. “You see how composed he is in the pocket, you see him escape the pocket, you see him protecting the ball much better than he did earlier in his career and you see him stepping up in the pocket and making some big-time, NFL-caliber throws.”
| 2014 | 242-336 (72.0) | 2,873 | 20-5 | 142 | 566 | 8 |
| 2013 | 248-371 (66.8) | 3,071 | 24-9 | 160 | 748 | 11 |
| 2012 | 318-478 (66.5) | 3,740 | 29-11 | 160 | 355 | 9 |
Shaw counts current Indianapolis Colts star Andrew Luck among his proteges, and the Stanford sideline general spent nine years as an NFL assistant.
So, when he talks of Hundley’s “NFL-caliber” performance, there’s merit. But if that wasn’t clear enough, Shaw added another point.
“He’s one of the best players in the country,” Shaw said.
How the Bruins Learned to Stop Worrying and Embraced Every Game
Hundley’s more confident play behind center is a reflection of the entire UCLA roster’s attitude adjustment.
“Mainly just have fun playing the game we love,” Kendricks explained. “And it’s been showing the past couple weeks.”
A longtime NFL coach, Mora never shies away from talking up the exuberance of college players as one of the game’s positives.
Mora made embracing that exuberance a point of emphasis amid the team’s struggles. And indeed, UCLA needed it.
It didn’t take an expert to see the Bruins felt the pressure of preseason hype through their first six games. But for those who needed clarification, linebacker Deon Hollins spelled it out in the week following the Oregon loss.
“We played kind of uptight,” he said.
If Hollins captured what was plaguing UCLA in its opening stretch, he perhaps better crystallized the looser attitude that is fueling the team’s current run.
I asked him following the Bruins’ 17-7 win over nationally ranked Arizona on Nov. 1 if they had turned a corner.
“Hell, yeah,” he said with a wide grin.
“A Chip on Our Shoulders”
The Bruins embraced a looser attitude as part of their midseason adjustment, but it isn’t all hugs and high-fives around the football facilities of the Westwood, California, campus.
For veterans like Kendricks, UCLA having detractors is the norm.
“The stigma in the past and everyone who doubts us, sometimes we get overshadowed with that,” Kendricks said. “But we come to work every day and have a little chip on our shoulders.”
UCLA didn’t need so much to overhaul its mentality as it did revisit an attitude cultivated in the past.
The praise and attention given to the Bruins leading up to the season was in stark contrast from the perception of the program in recent years. Perhaps what the Bruins needed was a reminder of how far they’d come to earn such recognition.
After all, it was just three years ago that UCLA finished 6-7, needing to petition its way into a bowl game for an eighth loss.
It was also in that season the Bruins suffered one of the most embarrassing losses in recent memory.
“My first start as a Bruin was the 50-0 loss we had [to USC in 2011],” Kendricks said.
That was the last time USC claimed the Victory Bell. Last week’s 38-20 win ensured the rivalry trophy remains in Westwood for a third consecutive year.
“We have our doubters,” wide receiver Thomas Duarte said. “And I think tonight we proved them wrong."
With a few more wins, the Bruins will do even more to disprove their naysayers.
A Family
In UCLA’s win over USC, Duarte was one of 10 different players who caught passes from Hundley.
“It’s always great to see the other guys getting the ball,” Duarte said “It’s just a reflection of the offense [coordinator Noel] Mazzone runs.”
Yes, even distribution has been the M.O. of the UCLA offense throughout 2014, so 10 Bruins getting receptions against USC is nothing particularly noteworthy.
However, in that spreading of the ball is exemplified an ethos that helped UCLA work through its initial rough patch.
“The ball gets spread around naturally. There’s no fighting for the ball, there’s none of that,” Duarte said. “We all want to see each other succeed.”
Take leading receiver Jordan Payton, who finished with his lowest output of the year at 31 yards. Despite that, Payton took pride in other areas of contribution.
“I know my production was lower, but I think I played an extremely great game with my perimeter blocking,” he said. “Whatever you can do to have the team win.”
The desire to see one another succeed perhaps above all else allowed UCLA to endure amid hard times.
The Bruins will try to elevate one another in the same fashion one more time on the day after Thanksgiving. And it’s somewhat fitting they can take the most important step toward finishing their resurgence in the holiday season.
“We’re like a little family, I guess you could say,” Duarte said.
Quotes obtained firsthand unless otherwise cited. Statistics courtesy of CFBstats.com.
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