First, one must give the team a ton of credit for not folding. I may not be much of a Mora fan, but his teams do not go in the bag as a general rule. Even last year they still played hard if badly to the end.
QB
Rosen is the team. It will be what Rosen can do vs the failing of the other units this year. Unfortunately, as good as Rosen was, he was also unbelievably lucky. He threw 3-4 easy picks and still shows the penchant to throw the ball up for grabs when he gets desperate. In many way he is the same QB as last year. Hopefully he will improve, but will be severely limited by his (non) supporting cast.
RB
Wow they're pretty bad. I now understand why Jamabo starts. Bolu must just be a practice player. He looks terrible in games. No explosion and no idea where the holes are. Not a very instinctive runner. Jamabo still looks like a WR playing RB. Wouldn't mind seeing Nate Starks. He's shown more than either of the other two in a game, but that's still not saying much. These guys wouldn't strart on too many teams.
WR-TE
Caleb Wilson has great hands, but it speaks volumes when your best skill player is a walkon transfer. Lasely looks the part but catches 2 out of every 3 balls. Pabico looks like the next in a long line walkons that look good against UCLA's defense and no one else. Andrews may be fast but it doesn't translate to the field well, but he's definitely the best of a blah group.
OL
The best thing you can say is that they were less bad in the 2nd half. They opened very few holes and were poor in pass protection most of the night against a team that is rebuilding their defense. Miller was particularly poor.
DL
Give up 382 on the ground and you're not doing great. That said they seemed to improve as the game wore on. 2nd string DL looked better than expected. Phillips looked like he belonged and certainly has a very high ceiling (shocker). This line might pressure the passer better than last year but will, as expected be far weaker against the run.
LB
Again... give up 382 on the ground and you're not doing great. Some of it was a scheme problem, but there were also bad pursuit angles, reads, inability to disengage from blockers. Have to say the difference in fundamentals between Ulbrich coached backers and White coached backers is night and day.
DB
Mostly pretty decent against the pass what little there was of it. Wadood still looks like the weak link against both run and pass. Watching him vs Kirk was one of the saddest things I've seen since Marley and Me. There were open WRs, ucla was fortunate that the AM Qbs couldn't hit water if they fell out of a boat. Those could be the 2 worst Qbs ucla sees this year. Poor against the runs and terrible against the QB runs.
Special Teams
Kickers were good, everything else was pretty bad. Again, aren't they coached by White? Starting to wonder if football coach was his best career choice.
Coaching
Offense
Fisch did what he could with what he had. It will interesting to see if he can find a way to slow the pass rush since it doesn't appear his OL will. I expect UCLA to throw the ball A LOT going forward. He's in a difficult spot, but certainly wasn't to blame for the offense's early failings.
Defense
Seemed like the usual Mora/Bradley show. Bring in a game plan that doesn't work, wait 2-3 quarters to adjust. Interesting to see how little they seemed to know their former OC. Pretty sure every ucla fan knew NM would run it every opportunity he got particularly with such terrible QBs. Once again UCLA seemed unable to stop even a mildly athletic QB that was no threat to throw. As usual the defense will be as good as their talent can make them and will likely not get much help from the coaches. This has been a staple under Mora will likely continue.
HC
Didn't piss away timeouts. Didn't pointlessly play 20 freshman. Kept his team interested in the game. One of his better nights. Bar might be low but he did meet it.
Looking forward...
They are who we thought they were. It's great that they came back from 34 down and bad how easy it was for them to get down by 34 to a middling to bad team. First games are always hard to judge, but Mora teams have been pretty consistent in their failings and successes. In general his teams play best early on, fade, step back up for a game or two then fade again. It's a bit concerning how bad they looked against a likely 6-6 or worse AM team. I'll stick with my prediction of 6-6 7-5, but it looks more and more like Rosen won't be able to stay healthy all year and there's no way they win too many without him.
QB
Rosen is the team. It will be what Rosen can do vs the failing of the other units this year. Unfortunately, as good as Rosen was, he was also unbelievably lucky. He threw 3-4 easy picks and still shows the penchant to throw the ball up for grabs when he gets desperate. In many way he is the same QB as last year. Hopefully he will improve, but will be severely limited by his (non) supporting cast.
RB
Wow they're pretty bad. I now understand why Jamabo starts. Bolu must just be a practice player. He looks terrible in games. No explosion and no idea where the holes are. Not a very instinctive runner. Jamabo still looks like a WR playing RB. Wouldn't mind seeing Nate Starks. He's shown more than either of the other two in a game, but that's still not saying much. These guys wouldn't strart on too many teams.
WR-TE
Caleb Wilson has great hands, but it speaks volumes when your best skill player is a walkon transfer. Lasely looks the part but catches 2 out of every 3 balls. Pabico looks like the next in a long line walkons that look good against UCLA's defense and no one else. Andrews may be fast but it doesn't translate to the field well, but he's definitely the best of a blah group.
OL
The best thing you can say is that they were less bad in the 2nd half. They opened very few holes and were poor in pass protection most of the night against a team that is rebuilding their defense. Miller was particularly poor.
DL
Give up 382 on the ground and you're not doing great. That said they seemed to improve as the game wore on. 2nd string DL looked better than expected. Phillips looked like he belonged and certainly has a very high ceiling (shocker). This line might pressure the passer better than last year but will, as expected be far weaker against the run.
LB
Again... give up 382 on the ground and you're not doing great. Some of it was a scheme problem, but there were also bad pursuit angles, reads, inability to disengage from blockers. Have to say the difference in fundamentals between Ulbrich coached backers and White coached backers is night and day.
DB
Mostly pretty decent against the pass what little there was of it. Wadood still looks like the weak link against both run and pass. Watching him vs Kirk was one of the saddest things I've seen since Marley and Me. There were open WRs, ucla was fortunate that the AM Qbs couldn't hit water if they fell out of a boat. Those could be the 2 worst Qbs ucla sees this year. Poor against the runs and terrible against the QB runs.
Special Teams
Kickers were good, everything else was pretty bad. Again, aren't they coached by White? Starting to wonder if football coach was his best career choice.
Coaching
Offense
Fisch did what he could with what he had. It will interesting to see if he can find a way to slow the pass rush since it doesn't appear his OL will. I expect UCLA to throw the ball A LOT going forward. He's in a difficult spot, but certainly wasn't to blame for the offense's early failings.
Defense
Seemed like the usual Mora/Bradley show. Bring in a game plan that doesn't work, wait 2-3 quarters to adjust. Interesting to see how little they seemed to know their former OC. Pretty sure every ucla fan knew NM would run it every opportunity he got particularly with such terrible QBs. Once again UCLA seemed unable to stop even a mildly athletic QB that was no threat to throw. As usual the defense will be as good as their talent can make them and will likely not get much help from the coaches. This has been a staple under Mora will likely continue.
HC
Didn't piss away timeouts. Didn't pointlessly play 20 freshman. Kept his team interested in the game. One of his better nights. Bar might be low but he did meet it.
Looking forward...
They are who we thought they were. It's great that they came back from 34 down and bad how easy it was for them to get down by 34 to a middling to bad team. First games are always hard to judge, but Mora teams have been pretty consistent in their failings and successes. In general his teams play best early on, fade, step back up for a game or two then fade again. It's a bit concerning how bad they looked against a likely 6-6 or worse AM team. I'll stick with my prediction of 6-6 7-5, but it looks more and more like Rosen won't be able to stay healthy all year and there's no way they win too many without him.
