WATCH: Chip Kelly Talks Washington Takeaways, UCLA Injury Updates
UCLA football coach Chip Kelly talked to the media Monday before practice about his final takeaways from the Washington win, how he’s preparing his team for ESPN College GameDay and what he expects out of Oregon’s offense.
CHIP KELLY
Opening statement
Before we get started, I just want to – Erik Chinander is the defensive coordinator at Nebraska's dad passed away, he was a longtime high school coach in the state of Iowa. Erik was on my staff at Oregon and was fortunate enough the coach with him in Philly. And just we lost a great man, the coaching community did, our thoughts and prayers from our entire program go out to Erik and his family and everybody at Nebraska. His dad Gene was a hell of a man, we lost a really good guy.
Reach out to Nebraska program?
I talked to Erik, so he's a really good friend of mine. It was tragic, it was a car accident so it was something sudden, but in Erik fashion and in Chinander fashion, he actually still coached in the game on Saturday. Now there's a service today and a funeral tomorrow, we won't be able to attend, there's a bunch of our guys that know Chins really well, myself and coach Azz both worked with him, Don Pellum worked with him, so our thoughts and prayers are with the Chinander family.
Film takeaways?
I thought our defense did a really good job, held them to under 300 yards of offense, they tackled really well, they created two turnovers and a critical one to start the game, it was a big one to kind of set the tone early. And then what we did in the fourth quarter, the first play of the fourth quarter, Blay had a a tackle for loss of -4, forced them to punt, we had a 13-play drive that went 90 yards and we scored, our defense went back out on the field, created a turnover, our offense went back on the field with 4:50 and they had three timeouts and ran the ball every down and ran the clock out. So I thought it was a really good team victory, we had contributions from everyone in all phases.
Will we see Kyle Philips at practice?
You will.
Is he available?
He's available.
Rolled the Washington run defense, what led to success?
I thought the fact that you have a quarterback that you have to defend is a difficult thing in college football. Dorian ended up with 87, Zach ended up at 130 and then you had Brit, so it's a tough deal to deal with cause the ball can go either way. And a lot of times, some of those rushing yards are maybe on designed pass play calls where people are in coverage and it's actually not their rush defense, but it's the ability to contain the quarterback. Dorian's done a really good job of understanding where his receivers are, and if the first, second and third option are covered, he may give you a chance to get out and use his legs. So it was just a really good effort out of our entire group rushing the football on Saturday.
Dorian's decision making improving as a runner?
Yeah, I think he's done a really good job of that. You watch him – we always preach to our quarterbacks 'Touchdown, first down, get down.' You don't want him to take a hit on every play. One of the abilities everyone talks about for a quarterback is availability and you don't want him to take some of those shots. When he went down in the Stanford game, and then he's such a tough kid, came back and played in that game and hasn't been 100%, he's probably close to back to normal in this game and you kind of saw that. But I think he's really making good decisions right now. We've got two interceptions on the season, one of them was at the end of the half, another one was a busted coverage in the LSU game when the defensive back wasn't where he was supposed to be, he was in man coverage, got caught on the wrong side. So I thought he's done a really good job making decisions this year, really happy with how he's run our football team.
Defensive front allowed fewer than 100 rushing yards for fourth time?
I think our D-line is doing a really nice job. I think a guy like Odua, Odua probably played his best game for us and was recognized as one of our players of the game on the defensive side of the ball. Otito has been solid all year long in there, but then the other guys, we rotate a ton of guys through there. Jay Toia's playing a lot, Manoa's starting to get some run, Datona Jackson's played really well for us, Bo Calvert has played really well in the transition to outside linebacker has done a really nice job, and I think our inside linebacker play has really upped in what Caleb can do, in what Jordan has added to our depth, Kaho has added to our depth and Kain and JonJon in there, so we have more depth than we've ever had at inside linebacker, so I think that front seven is doing a really nice job.
Agude available?
Yup.
Paul Grattan available?
Yup. You want to go through the whole lineup? We can just go available, available. You guys are enamored.
Mo Osling?
Mo Osling’s available.
Asking about Grattain because he played the whole fourth quarter at LG instead of Grattan
They just rotate. Paul played more snaps than Nio, but we always rotate Nio in so we feel like we’ve got multiple starters in the offensive line. I don’t look up and say, hey, this guy’s in, why’s that guy in? We just rotate people.
Film from Oregon's game against Cal?
Yeah, we’ve watched every game Oregon’s played, we’ve watched last year’s game against Oregon, we’ve watched every game this season and then our game last year and if there’s any coorelating games from a breakdown standpoint formationally, both ways, that we’ll look at so we’ve watched every game by the time we get in on Monday.
Kayvon Thibodeaux?
He’s a very good player, we’ve got to be aware of where he is. They use him, they move him in multiple places and like anybody, you have to make sure you know where he is on every play.
Martin Andrus?
Martin’s still working really hard. He’s available. He’ll be — they’re doing more with him now. He’s doing more than (he used to) now. I know he’s excited. And we’ll see how he progresses out here on the training sessions.
Discussing College GameDay with players?
Not yet. We meet on Mondays where we’re real specific with what we do so we talk immediately about the game we just played then we break and go watch that and then we talk immediately about the scouting report so the GameDay part doesn’t happen until Saturday. We’ll touch base about that this week, but our mornings are pretty structured in terms of what we’re doing so it’s really about putting the last game to bed and we talk about the preparation phase, the competition phase and the learning phase. So we do the learning phase when we come in the first things on Monday morning, then we start on scouting report for our next opponent, both offensively, defensively and special teams wise, so there wasn’t enough time to get any of that other stuff in. And there will be as the week goes along but that won’t occur until Saturday so Monday, we’ll concentrate on what we gotta get done on Monday.
Big opportunity?
I think it’s cool. I think it’s great for our fans, I think it’s great for our student body, especially after last year when nobody could go to games and the fact that now, we get to come back, everybody gets to attend, we’ve had some unbelievable settings there. The win over LSU and the crowd we had there was memorable and if you start to think about it, it’s an early kick, so I think we’ll be able to get a lot of people there, get a lot of kids there. I think it should be fun. So I think it’s a great opportunity for our fans, a great opportunity for the students.
Lost last two at home, message to fans?
We just don’t talk about it — we just talk about the next game. I think we’re 5-2, we got a really good football team.
Surprised Oregon booed its own offense on Friday?
I didn’t know they were.
They were hating on Anthony Brown pretty hard
We watch the game tape so I don’t watch the TV copy so I couldn’t tell you what the, ya know, and really, when we’re playing in games, it’s like a game tape to me, so I’m always unaware of the crowd so I couldn’t tell you what went on. (shrug) so I won’t comment on that because I didn’t even know that occurred.
Oregon offense and Brown?
They do a great job with him. He’s a kid who can beat you both running and throwing. They had a critical fourth-down in the Fresno State game, they called speed-option. Sp they have confidence in him. And he converted and made a big play for them in that game to win the game for them. So I think they got great confidence in him, I think Joe does a really great job of putting him in plays — it’s an RPO-based offense, everything they do is trying to put your defense in conflict. They probably throw more RPOs, or run more RPOs than anybody in the country. That’s kind of what their MO is. They’re trying to trick you and fool you and we gotta be really disciplined with our eyes. Our discipline has to be really disciplined this week.
Experience facing Joe Moorhead offense?
Once. We played them last year. He was at Penn State, we never played Penn State and we never played Mississippi State. So just last year’s game.
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