WATCH: Chip Kelly on UCLA's Loss to Oregon, Missed Opportunity on Final Drive
UCLA football coach Chip Kelly talked to reporters following his team’s loss to No. 10 Oregon in which they led by 14 early and nearly made a 17-point comeback late. Kelly touched on his team’s inability to run the ball, the status of quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson and the mental fortitude of the Bruins.
CHIP KELLY
Dorian unable to go?
Yeah, the protocol is the trainer just tells me if they were in or out and he said he was out, so we put Garbers in, so I don’t have any information on where he is or what his situation is, they just said he was out, so.
Playcalling change with Garbers in the game?
No, I mean, we were in our two-minute offense and obviously just worked off the two-minute menu, which Ethan does the same as Dorian does, so we didn’t change anything. He made a really huge play on the fourth-down conversion, you know, proud of that, and I didn’t get a good look at the last play so I don’t feel I can make a comment on that.
Mental mistakes, two offsides that erased interceptions?
Yeah, I mean, you have to clean those up, you know, those are self-inflicted wounds. Any administrative penalty that occurs before the snap, whether it be illegal procedure, lining up offsides, delay of game—there’s about seven of them and they actually usually comprise during the course of a season 70% of your penalties and you’ve got clean that stuff up. You know, we had two interceptions that we negated ourselves because we weren’t lined up the right way, so you’ll make the corrections when we get back with these guys on Monday.
Guys didn't quit like in year's past?
Yeah, I’ve known this group for a long time and they’re an unbelievably resilient bunch, you know when it’s 34-17, you think the game’s over but our players don’t, you know we’re going to fight to the end and we just came up one play. I felt like if we got the ball down there, I had all the confidence in the world in Nick if we got into a field-goal situation—we were really close to that. We were obviously thinking about getting the score [touchdown] but we had to move the ball down the field and both Dorian and Ethan did a really good job on that, I thought Dulcich came up big in clutch situations, Kyle made some big plays, Kam Brown made some big catches, Cota did, you know, I think a lot of kids contributed—Zach made a huge conversion on the pass out of the backfield, so there was a bunch of guys that competed. You know, Jay coming up with an interception late there, that was a huge play for us. Jordan had a big pick for us in the fourth quarter. That was a game there in itself in the fourth quarter, we just came up a little bit short.
Felt like big opportunity?
Yeah, it was. I won’t discount that. It was a huge opportunity. We just came up a little short so we still have to take the same approach. We’ll analyze the film, we’ll sit down with our guys, what cororections can we make? Which ones were good plays by them and you just kind of tip your cap and say, hey, that’s a heck of a play by that kid and which ones can we fix, and can we clean up? The self-inflicted wounds, as we talked about earlier, the illgal procedures and the lining up offsides, we can fix those things. So we’ve got a really good team in Utah that we’ve got to play next Saturday in Utah. Winning on the road is difficult in this league, as we know. We’ve been good on the road, but we have a tall task, going out to Utah and playing a Utah team so we’ll go through the same process. Tomorrow’s an off-day, then we’ll be back at it Monday morning.
Plan against Kayvon Thibodeaux?
We did a lot of things. We slid the protection to him, we kept backs in protection, we put tight end on him, we tried to give as many different looks as possible, he’s just a really talented player and you see those guys and you do have give him credit. I think he’s everybody thinks he is. He’s a heck of a football player. We were giving him every different look that we could possibly give him so credit to him.
Mood after that kind of loss?
We just talked about what can we do. What are the solutions we can come up with to not put ourselves int hat situation. The effort these guys play with, the resiliency these guys play with, you gotta be proud of them. You gotta look at the positives that you can take away from it and then also what can we correct because obviously it didn’t go out way so when it doesn’t go our way, what is the reason for that and let’s make the proper corrections and let’s learn from this situation. We talk about our preparation phase during the week, competition phase, which this was here and our learning phase, where you get a chance to look at the tape and dissect it and what are correctable mistakes, what are things that we can continue to work on to get better as a team, but the one thing with this team, you can’t fault them for their effort, you can’t fault them for their attitude, you can’t fault them for their resiliency and I think it’s a special group from that standpoint. And they’re never out of it. They’re going to compete and they keep playing, despite it and that’s part of what they have to learn. You have to learn to handle mistakes, what’s our recovery protocol? Football is not a game of perfect, but it’s a game of resiliency and if they continue to be as resilient like they are, then most of the time, you end up on the right side of things.
Oregon stopped your run game?
They did some different things, they put a lot of guys down on the line of scrimmage, they were packing the box, there were a lot of blitz looks in there, a lot of tight. You looked at it real – we tried to get the ball and run. Give their defensive line credit, their two interior kids don't get enough credit for how good they are. I think Dorlus is one of the top kids that I've seen in the 3, he really made some big plays in there, he's tough to run on. So it was some numbers advantage, so now we gotta try to spread them out and throw the ball a little bit, but when you spread them out and throw the ball a little bit, then you leave them five 1-on-1s in terms of pass rush situations. So there's kind of pick your poison when you're putting together your game plan against someone like that.
Confident if Garbers is your starting QB?
Yeah, we're very high on Ethan. I think he's an unbelievable competitor, he's got all the qualities you want in a quarterback, it's just the one thing he lacks is not his fault. It's just experience, he hasn't played a ton of snaps. And that's because we have a really good one ahead of him, so it's not a knock on Ethan that he hasn't had a ton of snaps, it's that Dorian has obviously been entrenched as our QB1. But if we have to play Ethan, then we'll be excited about what Ethan can do cause I think he's a really good football player.
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