WATCH: Chip Kelly on UCLA Football's Big Stage, Oregon Prep
UCLA football coach Chip Kelly spoke to reporters ahead of Wednesday morning's practice session at Wasserman Football Center. Kelly talked about his time at Oregon, playing at the host site for ESPN's "College GameDay," preparing for Bo Nix's running ability, improving the Bruins' red zone defense and how Dorian Thompson-Robinson has been able to learn from his past mistakes.
When you were at Oregon, did you have pink on your uniforms?
Did we have pink? I think we did, we had a lot of colors, so. I think at one point and time it may have been, I’m not sure.
This week it's because of breast cancer awareness?
Yeah, they’ve done that before in the past, so it’s a great cause and I think the NFL does the same thing at some point and time whether it’s October or November, so. A good cause, a good idea.
Did you ever have any input on what the helmets or uniforms looked like while you were there?
No, and nor should I, I mean, they’ve got a, Nike’s got an unbelievable design team; my background is not in design of uniforms, so Tinker Hatfield did a great job with that and the rest of the guys up there. That’s what they’re known for and they do an unbelievable job.
Does having GameDay there matter as the visiting team, extra national exposure is a good result of that?
Yeah, it depends on the outcome of the game. It’s about the game and GameDay’s great for college football, they do such a great job, it’s great to see Coach Corso back on this past week, it’s synonymous with college football bu the reality is for the two teams involved, it’s about the game.
What have you seen out of Oregon's offensive scheme? Similar to anything you've seen in the last couple years?
I mean, yeah, there’s a lot of similarities to a lot of teams that play, I think everybody kind of copycats each other throughout college football. They’re sound, they run the football really well, their quarterback is a true threat in the running game, he’s a big physical kid that can get the ball on the perimeter, but they also distribute the ball in the passing game really well, so I think it’s a balanced attack and you’ve got to account for all 11. You know, sometimes when you have a quarterback that’s not a runner, you don’t have to account for him in the run game, but with this quarterback you do, so.
Help to have gone against Cameron Rising and his running ability?
Yeah. I mean, any time you go against a quarterback that has the ability to run—the South Alabama quarterback had the ability to run, Penix has a little bit of an ability to run, you know, I think they’re probably not as fast as Bo is, but we’re not watching Utah tape preparing for Oregon, so.
Wet ball drills?
Yeah, we’ve always done those when we look at the extended weather forecast, so we’ll work with wet ball drills. We have in the past and this week so far, so we’ll continue to do that.
How does Shea Pitts' academic ability complement his athletic ability?
That’s a great question. I think one thing about Shea is that he’s the ultimate competitor whether it’s in the classroom, in the weight room or on the practice field, he wants to be great at everything he does, I think really that’s his mindset more importantly than his academic ability or his athletic ability that sets Shea apart from other people; he’s just such a driven individual, you know, it’s kind of special to see how he approaches everything. We always talk about it’s how you do the small things, it’s how you do all things and I think Shea epitomizes that.
Oregon only allowed one sack all year – what do you see that as a product of?
I think the quarterback does a good job of getting the ball out on time, the quarterback’s athletic and moves around a lot, I think the offensive line is obviously very solid in their protection scheme, so it’s always a, there’s not a stat that’s attributed to just one player it’s a team game, so it’s a tribute to everybody on the offensive side.
You said in the past that you win a game and the next game gets bigger, and so on – what does it feel like to keep stacking wins and getting to another big game?
Yeah, I mean, that’s in longterm when you look back at it, but the reality is is, each week is its own season, so you’ve got to kind of approach it that way, so what we’ve done in the past six weeks doesn’t really have an affect on what goes on this week, what has an affect on this week is our preparation for this week and I think this group, more than any since we’ve been here, has really, truly understood that what you have done in the past really is irrelevant, you know, you can’t just sit on your laurels and say, ‘Hey, we were average on Tuesday, average on Wednesday, average on Thursday and can’t figure out why we didn’t play well on Saturday. For us to play well on Saturday, it’s more important than stacking up wins, it’s more important than stacking up really good days just this week to affect the outcome of the game on Saturday.
How would you assess Monday and Tuesday's practices?
They were good.
Been good at limiting explosive plays on defense, but red zone has been a different story – is there a way to hone in on that specifically?
Yeah, I think you always drill red zone—today’s a big red zone day for us, we do a one on one red zone, we do ones versus ones in the red zone on Wednesdays, so it really just depends on the attack you’re facing and what you’re getting there, sometimes it’s a byproduct of, did the offense turn the ball over in the red zone and you gave them a short field to work with or did your return unit allow a return that got the ball into the red zone so it was a short field for the offense, so there’s a lot of combinations that get involved in that one.
Dorian said he's still thinking about his interception from two weeks ago – is it great to hold onto a memory like that when you preach going week-to-week?
Yeah. We’re all a byproduct of our experiences, so we go week to week in terms of what we have to do from preparation but I think hanging onto something where he understands what the mistake was, I think that’s what enables him to not make that mistake again, so if he gets put in that same situation again, that wouldn’t be smart to do the same thing. It’s no different than a little kid who touches the stove and he’s going to think about that a year later and maybe I shouldn’t touch the stove because the last time I did that, something bad happened to me, so that’s just part of growth and part of learning, you learn from your mistakes and the fact that he is learning from his mistakes, I would be more afraid of it if he said, ‘I don’t even remember it, I don’t know what I did on it.’ Then you’re probably liable to make that same mistake again, but that’s the type of kid that Dorian is, he understands that mistakes can be turned into positives if you use them to be a positive.
In the past when you've gone up to Eugene, you've visited with Nick Aliotti because he was on the game broadcast – anyone else you enjoy seeing pregame or postgame up there?
Nah, I don’t really know who’s going to the game, so if there are friends and people there then I see them and I’ll obviously interact with them but I don’t talk to anybody, who’s going to the game, who’s not going to the game.
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