WATCH: Chip Kelly Talks UCLA Football's Bowl Preparations, Coaches Poll Gripes
UCLA football coach Chip Kelly was made available to the media prior to Friday's practice.
Kelly spoke on what the Bruins have been going over in training sessions and how impressed he's been, as well as how they've adjusted with several coaches and players leaving the team in the past few weeks. Kelly was also asked if he was a part of the USA Today Coaches Poll, to which he responded with a long answer about how he and likely any other coach in the country doesn't have enough time to watch every game and truly know which team is better than others.
CHIP KELLY
Thoughts on bowl practice and what you've seen from the team?
They’ve been great and I think they’re excited about playing, you know, the one thing about this group is they love football, so anything about it, I think when you get into the nuts and bolts and we talk about it all the time, the best part of football is actually football, so when they get back out on the practice field, when they get in the meeting rooms, they enjoy it. They had finals last week so we had a break of five days and we specifically went on the weekends and then gave them five days off and then kind of got into practice in earnest the other day, so we kind of give it like it’s our daily schedule so today’s a Wednesday for us even though it’s, I think it’s not a Wednesday in the real world but it’s a Wednesday for us, so we’re going to go through our typical Wednesday training session today with our meetings this morning leading up to it and then our group, we’ll bring them back in the afternoon like we’ve always done for our night meetings, but it’s a Wednesday deal, but they’ve been great, they’re excited, they’re excited about one more opportunity to play together with this group.
A chance to evaluation some of the younger guys more?
Not really because we do it all the time, so every Friday practice we have had our travel guys are in the weight room lifting and then we always have taken the younger guys all season long on every Friday and had individual periods with them, seven-on-seven periods with them, and 11-on-11, so this has been a constant, ongoing deal for us, so there’s nothing that happened over those first two weekend practices that we’re like, ‘Hey, who’s that kid?’ because we coach them every week, so we see them every day, so.
COVID creeping up again?
You know, obviously the health and safety of our players is No. 1, we were one of, us and Oregon State, we were one of only two teams in the league to play every game last year. I credit our university and really specifically our players for how they’ve handled it. We actually had a long meeting last night about taking care of our ecosystem. You know, we’re 11 days away from our game and our prep has been good but I’m sure NC State’s prep has been good; I think the only thing that can sidetrack it is potentially an outbreak. I think there were the most players—37 players in the NFL tested positive on Monday, which is the most they’ve ever had. You go throughout the country, our basketball team has had games canceled, our women’s basketball team has had games canceled, so we’re very conscious about it and we’re trying to do everything we can that we’ve learned from the past. You know, our meetings are set up that way, there’s space so that no one is within six feet of each other in the meeting room, we do a lot of things on the field so we’re outside, most of our bigger team meetings will be held outside, but I would say all of us—and I think I speak for all, everybody heading into bowl season now is a little nervous because it sounds like it’s going to get worse before it gets better, so we’ve all got our fingers crossed and we’re all going to do what we can possibly do to stay away from it, but it doesn’t—when you look at this variant, it sounds like it spreads a lot faster, a lot quicker, so we’ve just got to be conscious of it and do what we can to prevent that, so.
Know more about NC now besides Dave Dorren being the coach and that they're the Wolfpack?
That is 100% true. He is still the head coach and that is still their nickname. Really good football team, their quarterback’s outstanding, I think he’s thrown 35 touchdowns, four interceptions, you know his TD-to-interception ratio is off the charts, they’ve got two really, really good running backs, they’re a 3-3 stack defense that’s kind of all over the place, they have an inside linebacker who’s as good as we’ll face, they’ve got a safety that’s all over the field like a Tasmanian devil and makes a ton of plays, so it’s a good team, beat Clemson, lost by one to Miami, lost to Wake Forest, who played in the [ACC] championship game, and they lost to Mississippi State, an ACC team, so it’s a really, really good football team, Dave’s done a really nice job there; they’re tough, they’re hard-nosed, they’re very disciplined, they’ve got a dynamic kick returner—I think they’re No. 1 in the country in kick returners, so it’s in all three phases, they’re really well-coached and they’ve got really good players, so we’re excited about the matchup and I think that’s what happens in the bowl games and kind of excites everybody is, you’ve got a team from the East Coast playing a team from the West Coast that normally would not play each other but it’s a great matchup in the Holiday Bowl and we’re excited about the challenge but you really won’t know what they’re all about until you actually get out on the field and go, OK, that’s what that guy looks like, that’s what this guy looks like because we’ve never seen them and we don’t play any crossover games where somebody we played played them, so you could say, you kind of understand, hey, that’s what the Cal receiver’s like and then he played them so now we have a feeling for them, so it will be new for them, it will be new for us.
Thoughts on OL Ikem Ekwonu?
He’s one of the best offensive linemen in the country, extremely athletic. You know, people have been talking about him for a couple of years, kind of look every day to see if he’s going to opt out—no, I’m joking about that; I mean, our guys are excited if they get an opportunity to play against him because he’s a great guy to measure yourself by because he certainly is one of the top tackles in the country and will be a high draft pick.
So many guys in the transfer portal impacting practice? Where are you at punter?
Yeah, we’re fine. There’s a lot of kids—and again, for all those kids, we’ve met with every kid on our team and know exactly where they stand and you have four years of eligibility, you know, how do you want to use them? And sometimes, do you want to be a scout squad player or do you want to play somewhere where you’re going to get an opportunity to get on the field? But our job, whether they’re here for five days or five years, is to help them in that situation, so we’ve had a couple of kids—you know, they all have the option if they put their name in the portal to stay through bowl practice because they’ve earned that and a lot of kids have elected to do that; some kids have elected, maybe they’ve got some opportunities right now that they want to already move on and some of those kids have been offered some scholarships at some lower levels and are going to take advantage of that, but it hasn’t impacted us or our numbers or anything like that, so.
Would you accept them all back?
Yeah, we haven’t had that discussion with them. What we’re trying to do here is help grow them as players. Like, they get an opportunity to practice for two more weeks, so if you get an opportunity to practice for two more weeks, you know how you get better at football? By playing football. You know how you don’t get better at football? By sitting at home waiting for someone to call you, so I think the kids that have opted for that aspect, again, we’re just trying to help develop them and see what they can do and then they’ll assess and we’ll assess what’s the best situation for them. Like, what do you want to do? It’s their decision—we would love for all of them to stay, but what I want for them is to be in the right situation, so that’s kind of how we go about it.
Anticipate any other opt-outs besides Otito?
No, and Otito’s an injury thing, it’s not an opt-out, that’s not Otito’s mindset, I think Otito really, really, really wants to play football and I love Otito, but he’s not 100% healthy right now, so. Everybody else that’s practicing, I would be surprised if someone goes through two weeks of training and then the day before the game says they’re not going to play in the game, so we don’t anticipate that.
Aany update on your contract?
Yeah, and again, we’ve talked about this, my contract is a personal thing between me, so I don’t need to discuss that publicly and I don’t mean to be, but you know, what’s your contract? Do we talk about that? Do we talk about other people’s contracts? For some reason, in this profession that they think it’s, I’ve just never been that way and that’s my choice to not talk about that just like some people think that that’s something they should know but that’s a personal thing to me, so I love this school and our school has been great to me, so I’m not concerned. It’s also not a very big concern for me, to be honest with you, so.
DL and OLB coaching updates?
Yeah, we’re going to go through the bowl game because you’re not going to get someone in here that’s going to learn your system and you can say, Hey, let’s transition, just like you’re not going to take a transfer player 11 days before your game and say, ‘Hey, we’re going to get that kid to play,’ so we’ve done our due diligence, we’ve talked to people and have conducted interviews. Even if we were to hire someone three days from now, that person’s not going to be able to come in here and coach in our bowl game, so we were fortunate to have Clancy Pendergast here. You know, you talk about a guy who has been a defensive coordinator in the National Football League, coached in Super Bowls, so it was a luxury for us when Clance was here that we would get an opportunity to put him with our front guys and he’ll coach them through the bowl game and then figure out where we are from that standpoint.
Handling both positions?
Right now he is, yeah.
Voter in coaches poll?
No. And I don’t know how anybody does because you can’t tell me that there’s a coach in the country that watched all—however many you’ve got to vote for—35 teams. When we play on Saturday, I get up in the morning and I’m watching our previous game and then moving on to our next opponent. I don’t know what happened in the ACC unless someone told me, so the fact that I can rank what the ACC rankings would be is really, to me, I don’t know how they, and if someone does it and watches all those games, then wow, my hat’s off to them, but our focus and attention is on the team that we have, so for someone to say that this team is third in the ACC and that puts them 14th in the country, I don’t get an opportunity to see those guys play nor should I because I should be focused on our team, so even if we have a night game, well, if one of our teams that we’re going to play is playing in the afternoon on Saturday, I’m going to watch a Pac-12 team play because we’re playing them in two weeks as opposed to I’m going to watch an SEC game and a Big 12 game—it’s not that I’m not a fan of football, you just don’t have the opportunity. I don’t even know if you’re not a coach, the people that vote in the AP poll—do any of you guys vote in those polls?
Tony watches 22 games
There’s 22 games a week, so you’ve seen 44 teams, there’s 130 teams. Who can do that? I don’t know anybody that can do that. Could you tell me, who are the top teams in the SEC East? I don’t know because we don’t see it enough, so.
Coaches hand it off to someone?
Yeah, but then why do they call it a coaches poll, so if you hand it off, who do you hand it off to? Call it the hand it off poll. I’m in agreement with you and I understand the question and if there is someone out there that does it, I don’t know—we’ve all been offered the opportunity to do it and I’ve turned it down because I couldn’t do a really good job at it; if I can’t do a really good job at it, then pass it somebody that can do a good job at it. Now there are people out there, then really the poll should be some type of media poll because the media has the opportunity to see everybody and that’s who they cover. You know, get the top media guys in the country and let them get together because they see, you know the guys on GameDay, they watch every single game, the guys on the Fox crew that watch every single game, there’s a bunch of guys out there that do see it and they see it so much better than we do, so for us to have an opinion of, who’s the second-ranked team in the American, I don’t know that. I know Cincinnati’s really good, I know Houston had a really good year, but I’ve never seen either of them play an entire game where I could make an observation and I don’t even know how you do that, so how do you compare who the best team in that conference is to this conference and they’ve never played each other? I don’t know. That’s what makes this game beautiful because everybody has an opinion, so I think we should just have a national poll where everybody gets a vote, see how that part works. Does that answer your question?
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