WATCH: Chip Kelly Talks UCLA Beating Bowling Green in Opener
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UCLA football coach Chip Kelly spoke to reporters following Saturday afternoon’s 45-17 win over Bowling Green. Kelly talked about his team digging itself out of an early hole, how the Bruins were able to prepare for the 100-degree heat, the importance of chunk plays for the offense and what the defense was able to get done against the Falcons.
Opening statement
I’m ready to go, I just want to say hello to our fans in Manila, I know it’s early morning there but I hope they got up early to watch the game.
Dreadful first quarter but get everything you wanted after that?
Yeah, well, we wanted a ‘W’ and we don’t ask for anything and don’t prescribe anything about what’s going to happen as the game unfolds, the way the game unfolds. We’ve talked to our players about responding and I thought they did respond. We dug ourselves a hole but we didn’t continue to keep digging. I mean, we fought our way out of the hole—we were down 17-7 and ended up winning 45-17. So it’s a credit to those guys. We made some mistakes and that’s what you have to do; we don’t have preseason games. When you’re in a practice situation and someone makes a mistake, you do it over. You don’t get do-overs here. We did dig ourselves a little bit of a hole to start, but I was really proud of the way our guys responded.
Big takeaways?
Just their mindset more than anything and how they responded to things. I mean, we’ll wait til we get to the tape specifically to see what we did, but I know defensively we talked about being able to generate a rush with the front four and you were playing against a team that really liked to throw the football, so that was a challenge for us, allowed us to play coverage—I thought our back end did a really good job from a coverage standpoint and I thought our rush got home, so I think that was my first takeaway, just watching how our defense performed today.
Offensive line troubles?
I’d have to look at the tape to get to that point and time but I think we had 600-and-some-odd yards of offense, so I don’t think they played poorly. There’s things they can fix and they can get better at, but we need to look at the tape to get into any specifics.
Defense only gave up 10 points and 162 yards?
I liked their effort, I liked how hard they played. Again, when we get into the technical aspect we’ll figure that out when we watch the film, but I thought we talked about being able to be in coverage and rush four and against a team that did a really nice job last year throwing the football, you know, going into it, that quarterback—and I talked to him after the game, he’s a tough sucker—we got after him today and he just kept bouncing back and making plays and they have a really sound scheme. You know, coach Loeffler does a great job with that they do offensively, so for us to do what we did—hold them under 200 yards and really seven points, that was really impressive to start the season and hopefully we can build upon that.
Chunk plays' importance to this offense, like with Dorian's run and Josiah's long TD?
Yeah, X plays for anybody, if you win the X play battle, you know, obviously if you can win the turnover battle and the X play battle you’re probably going to win the football game and our guys know that, that’s part of our plan, winning the X play battle—do we have more X plays than they have? And it’s a combination of what we do on the defensive side of the ball and what we do offensively but you know, when we needed a play and we’re down, it was Dorian’s long touchdown and then Zach really kind of sparked us. I think it was the two veteran leaders on the offensive side of the ball kind of helped us get out of that hole and it was good to see and that’s what you need—you’ve got to rely on your playmakers in those deals and then they can put up some really big plays for them.
Special teams issues early on? Muffed punt and blocked punt?
I have to look at the film. I think Jake, if you talked to him about it, I think he just took his eyes off it. It was a fair catch situation, we just have to field the ball. And then we'll have to look at the film and see what happened with the blocked punt.
How big of a factor was the heat? Did you call certain plays differently?
I don't think it was a factor, because it affected both teams. I think they had a lot of guys going down with cramps. We had a few guys that cramped a little bit. I thought our opponent, our medical team, our football performance team did a really good job of getting our guys prepared for this from a hydration standpoint, understanding it, but it was hot. But there was no getting around that, I don't know if it was a factor in the game, but it was certainly -- you could feel it down there. It was as hot as I've been in a game, some of the games we played at Arizona State were kind of like that, but playing games where it's in triple digits, you gotta be able to fight through it a little bit and I think our guys did a good job with that.
Conditioning to prepare – what went into that? And what's it say about your players preparation?
We have a hydration program that our guys go through in terms of what they put in their bodies in terms of electrolyte wise, what type of fluids they're putting in their bodies, we check for (???), we check for hydration on a daily basis and obviously we hydrate tested them before we're here. We can prescribe if they are slightly dehydrated, how many milliliters of water and electrolytes they need to get back to where they need to go with the cool zone fans on the field. We did some work with some ice towels that can kind of get to your Vagus nerve and can take your body temperature down a little bit quicker. So, we had a hydration plan going into this game and I think our guys executed it.
Get a sense when another other team starts to wilt because of the conditions?
You could see that. They probably had more cramping than we did. We had one or two, but there was a few times when there was four, five guys down, and they were legit cramping, you could see it in them, that it makes it difficult. So obviously your depth in a game like this will get tested, and I think our depth kind of shone through as our game went along.
Keegan Jones' long TD?
Been impressed with Keegan, the question came up a lot, you have Zach, we had Brittain, Brittain's playing for the Raiders now, but Keegan had a great offseason for us, has worked extremely hard and I thought he did some really good things when he was out there. And TJ got an opportunity late and I thought he flashed a little bit, we'll continue to grow, we'll continue to grow at the running back spot behind Zach, but I thought Keegan and TJ both did a really nice job.
Zach Charbonnet being a workhorse, getting 100+ yards on 21 carries?
Yeah, that's just Zach. You know, he's just – he's a warrior. A lot of guys carry it 21 times and they're kinda tired, he wants to know why he didn't get more. He's that type of kid, he just – tremendous work ethic. We kinda hang our hat on being able to run the football, and it starts with him. And again, we needed both him and Dorian. When we got down a little bit, you can kinda see those are the guys we relied on a little bit and they responded, so that was a real positive for us.
Back to the hat after visor last year?
I just grabbed it in my locker. Plus, from the sun standpoint, it was a little bit better.
Didn't know Bobo had to change jerseys on the punt return?
No, we knew that was an issue for us. That's been something we worked on all week. I don't know exactly what happened on that one, but he has to put a jersey on cause Choe Bryant-Strother's is No. 9, he's on defense and he's on our punt rush team, so.
Who's responsibility is that?
That's ours.
The coaching staff?
Yeah.
Talk about the 4th down delay of game?
Yeah, we didn't snap the ball in time, so that's on us.
What gives you the confidence that today's iffy start was a temporary thing?
Well, I think every game – you never play a perfect game. You know, so there's always things you have to work on after every game you play. The cool thing is that Winston Churchhill said "The problems of victory are a lot more agreeable than the problems of defeat, but they're no less difficult." So we have things we have to get better at, and I think that's what college football is. We will not be the same team at the end of the year than we are at the beginning of the year. As I told our guys, I hope our goal is that this is the worst game we play. And that's how you learn, that's how learning happens, is that you make mistakes and then you go out and correct those mistakes, and that's what the process is for us and I think our guys understand that. But the one thing we talk about, do we play with great effort? And then how do we respond when things don't go our way, and I thought both of those things, we accomplished today, but there's still a ton of football that we have to get better at. So there's 12 games, now we've got 11 left. You get one a week, so you learn from it, you hope we'll come back in on Monday, we'll make the necessary corrections and then we'll move on to our next opponent.
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