UCLA vs. Stanford Week 4: Postgame Takeaways
PALO ALTO — The sky is not falling, as many may have believed seven days ago.
No. 20 UCLA football (3-1, 1-0 Pac-12) beat Stanford (2-2, 1-1) for the second time in three years, turning the tables in the rivalry series after the Cardinal took the previous 11 matchups. The game very nearly took a turn in the fourth quarter, but the Bruins broke the 21-21 tie by finishing down the stretch for the first time in a long time.
These are four of the biggest takeaways, narratives and questions to come out of Saturday's game.
UCLA owns one of the best offenses in the country
Whether it's analytics, raw stats or the eye test, these Bruins have proven time and time again they can put up points in bunches.
Saturday actually marked their worst scoring night of the season, and they still scored five touchdowns. UCLA's 38.5 points per game ranks No. 26 in the FBS and No. 11 among Power Five teams who have played multiple Power Five teams.
Quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson's 175.2 passer rating ranks inside the top 10 in the Power Five. Running back Zach Charbonnet is one of seven running backs in the country with at least 360 yards and seven touchdowns, and his 7.8 yards per carry ranks No. 6 overall.
The biggest thing is probably that there have been some pretty clear mistakes for the Bruins to this point, ones that were clear again on Saturday.
Thompson-Robinson missed some throws early on. Penalties and bad snaps made things tougher, and the interior line is still adjusting to some early season personnel changes.
Even with all of that, the production has been there, and the fact that there is room to improve shows just how high the ceiling can be for this Bruins offense.
Time of possession proves key
The Bruins held the ball for 37:35 compared to 22:25 for the Cardinal, and although sometimes time of possession can be a misleading stat, it certainly wasn't Saturday night.
After converting on good field position to open the game and going three-and-out the next drive, UCLA ate up 8:00 on a 17-play, 88-yard touchdown drive. To ice the game, they killed 6:40 off the clock in the fourth quarter and capped it off with a short touchdown to go up 11 with just 2:30 left for Stanford to mount a comeback.
There was even one more drive for the Bruins that lasted over six minutes – it ended in a missed field goal after a blown block led to an ill-timed sack though.
Overall, UCLA had four drives go over five minutes compared to zero for Stanford. The Cardinal started putting up points in the second half, but not by methodically moving the ball downfield, rather with a chunk play or two and taking the top off the defense.
That isn't to say the Bruin defense was perfect, but they helped stop the Cardinal from getting in a rhythm. Through the first three quarters, Stanford had just one drive that went for longer than three plays. UCLA had seven of such drives to that point, and that was before the long one in the fourth to clinch the game.
Holding onto the ball played a big part in that, as did tightening up the "cushion of death" on the other side of the ball.
Adversity no longer leads to losses
In the 2020 Stanford game, UCLA utterly collapsed.
Fumbles, blown coverages, soft tackling, bad short-yardage play calls, the whole shebang. There was a lot of the same against Fresno State a week ago, even if it wasn't quite as messy and more just an example of poor defense and pass coverage.
When the Cardinal came back to tie the game 21-21 in the fourth quarter, it just looked like more of the same.
This is apparently a different Bruin team, however. No head-scratching play-calls down the stretch, no giveaways, no loose coverage on the outside – just good, clean football to close out a game in which they outplayed their opponents from start to finish.
Striker Qwuantrezz Knight said last year's loss to Stanford popped into his head when the game was tied this time around, but that he and his teammates had put too much focus on finishing games both in the offseason and over the last week of practice to let it slip away. That work, both mental and physical, paid off, and the players and coaches seemed to have taken away some valuable lessons from their past failures.
The Bruins are in the driver's seat
The Pac-12 South is wide open, technically speaking. Teams have played one, at most two, conference games to this point, so it's hard to really say anything's impossible.
A 1-5 UCLA team that opened Pac-12 play 1-2 still controlled its own destiny as late as Nov. 16 back in 2019, and that isn't all too uncommon within the chaotic world of college football. But winning your first conference game is step No. 1 to winning the conference, and it means the Bruins won't have to cross their fingers and pray for certain results throughout the entire Pac-12 slate.
Just looking at the rest of the division, UCLA certainly has to like its chances.
Arizona is a bottom feeder and Colorado is 1-3 with virtually no offense to speak of. Utah lost back-to-back nonconference games prior to their too-close-for-comfort win against Washington State on Saturday, with the Cougars having just lost at home to a USC team with an injured starting quarterback less than a week removed from firing their head coach.
And speaking of the Trojans, they got run out of their own building by Oregon State – a team that hadn't won in the Coliseum in nearly 50 years. Their quarterback and interim coach seem to have completely lost the support of the fanbase on top of that. Arizona State, the only other team in the South with a real shot at making noise, will come to the Rose Bowl this weekend to face a UCLA team that is uberconfident and mostly healthy if Thompson-Robinson plays.
If the Bruins can ride this high and come away with a home win to open Pac-12 play 2-0 with a head-to-head win over another contender, they are going to love their chances of appearing in their first conference title game in nine years.
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