UCLA vs. Arizona College Football Week 11: Postgame Takeaways

The Bruins suffered a season-defining loss at home to one of the worst teams in the conference.

No. 12 UCLA football (8-2, 5-2 Pac-12) lost to Arizona (4-6, 2-5 Pac-12) 34-28 at the Rose Bowl on Saturday. The Bruins fell behind early but still had plenty of chances to pull out the win, only to fall short each and every time in the eventual home upset.

These are three of the biggest takeaways, narratives and questions to come out of Saturday's game.

A new, darker outlook on the season

Fans who have followed UCLA for the past few decades may be familiar with the feeling they felt after Saturday's letdown loss.

Whether it was the late-season collapse of 1998, the wasted hot start of 2005 or the many crushing defeats at the hands of Stanford in the Jim Mora, the Bruins have made a habit of blowing perfect opportunities. That's exactly what they had midway through this season, opening the year 6-0 and even holding strong at 8-1 despite a rough loss at Oregon and a near-collapse against Arizona State.

It seemed like this team would be different, that this one the one that could buck those trends and actually get UCLA to the promised land. Much of the past week was spent planning out a path to the College Football Playoff, and complaining that USC was unjustly ranked ahead of them.

All of that is out the window now.

The CFP is as out of reach as it was this time last year, and thanks to Oregon's loss to Washington, the chances of a Pac-12 team making the final four are now pretty low as well. That means that, even if UCLA beats USC and Cal, it would also need to win the Pac-12 championship game in order to make the Rose Bowl.

To get to that point, the Bruins don't even control their own destiny anymore. They need the Ducks to beat the Utes, and that's after Utah won 2-of-2 against Oregon last season.

A week ago, the Rose Bowl, Cotton Bowl and Fiesta Bowl were all within reach, and actually looking like likely and viable postseason destinations for UCLA. Now, the Alamo Bowl and Las Vegas Bowl are the more likely stops, which is pretty deflating considering how high expectations got at times this season.

Defense remains slow, inadequate

It's been five years, and Chip Kelly has yet to bring an average defense to Westwood.

Under Jerry Azzinaro, the Bruins boasted one of the worst pass defenses in the country and one of the worst overall in the Pac-12. The team started to improve despite the defense in recent years, thanks to the offense surging to the highest of levels.

Bill McGovern coming in to replace Azzinaro was a heavily questioned move at the time, given the similarities between the two in terms of style and background. Still, through the first six weeks, the defense was actually mediocre, which was a solid improvement and something to feel pretty good about.

Things fell apart against Oregon, though, and those issues came back up against Arizona State and now Arizona as well. It's hard to blame McGovern outright, since he has missed the last three games with an illness, and UCLA will surely be happy to have him back when he does eventually return.

But McGovern is still coming to practice and meetings and it's his responsibility to design the defense as a whole and decide what to install. It may be Clancy Pendergast calling the plays in real time, but this is still McGovern's defense.

To be fair, you can make the argument that this is still Azzinaro's defense, given that defensive backs coach Brian Norwood was held over from his assistant pool and that a lot of the players came up under Azzinaro. It's going to be difficult to flush out all of those issues in one year, considering how drastic they were at times.

It is tough to see McGovern really turning the page on this era, however, based on what his unit has looked like over the past month.

The pass rush is powerful, but undisciplined. The linebackers – including Darius Muasau, the Hawaii transfer who was heralded as the savior at the position – have been slow and outmatched. The secondary is at a talent deficit against every receiving corps it plays.

The talent isn't there, the gameplan isn't there and the production isn't there. This defense is genuinely bad, and the base stats are far too kind to this disaster of a unit.

Offense falters in surprise letdown performance

If you had told me Friday that the Bruins were going to lose to the Wildcats, I would assume it would be in a shootout. Their defense may not have played well, but that was a safe assumption coming into the game.

The offense, on the other hand, was expected to put up enough points to where a shaky defense performance didn't really matter. That wasn't the case, as UCLA scored just 28 points against a defense that had allowed 40-plus in five of their previous six games.

The only team that didn't break that threshold in that time was Colorado – one of the worst offenses in Pac-12 history. FCS program North Dakota State scored 28 points against Arizona, which is just inexcusable company to be in for UCLA.

Running back Zach Charbonnet had a big game in his return from injury, racking up 219 total yards and three touchdowns on 33 touches. Colson Yankoff had 24 yards on four touches, giving the power back yet another efficient performance.

But quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson had his worst game in the read option since probably his sophomore year, and that cost UCLA big time. Keegan Jones getting zero carries and one catch the week after he rushed for nearly 100 yards was an interesting move as well, and Kazmeir Allen being out with an injury certainly dinged the offense's explosiveness.

The receivers weren't creating much separation, and Kelly dialed up way too many deep balls late when the intermediate stuff was actually working. Thompson-Robinson wasn't making horrible throws, he just didn't have very many windows or opportunities to complete passes deeper than 10 yards down the field.

That all came to a head on the last drive, when chunk plays got the Bruins well into Wildcat territory with 22 seconds left on the clock. Instead of taking one or two more completions over the middle to give his quarterback a better chance at completing a game-winner, Kelly kept drawing up Hail Mary passes for Thompson-Robinson.

A few came close to getting completed – and perhaps the last one to receiver Jake Bobo could have been a walk-off touchdown if the pass protection wasn't so poor – but nothing ended up working.

The poor play-calling, sketchy clock management, misusage of timeouts and lack of athleticism and talent really stood out Saturday, and they all raise several major questions about the short term and long term future of the program.

It wasn't a horrible performance on paper for the Bruins' offense, but given the context and the knowledge that the defense was always going to allow a lot of points, it was truly disappointing.

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