WATCH: Chip Kelly Details UCLA's Offensive Line Rotation, Jedd Fisch Relationship
UCLA football coach Chip Kelly talks about his past with Arizona coach Jedd Fisch, the lineup decisions on the offensive line and Chase Artopoeus standing out as the scout team quarterback.
CHIP KELLY
Jedd Fisch helpful in your transition to UCLA?
I didn’t have a long transition with Jedd, I was here for like a week or two. They were practicing for the bowl game so I stayed away and let him coach the team and that was about it. He was interviewing for a few jobs so he really wasn’t around, so there wasn’t much of an overlap.
Talk to him about the team at the time?
A little bit, yeah. I mean, I talked to every coach that was here when I got here. So I met with everybody who was still on staff.
Consideration adding him to staff?
I had already had our staff in place.
Tried to hire him in Philadelphia?
No.
Fisch said yesterday that you had talked about it?
Nah. I’ve known Jedd for a long time but I did not talk to him about that.
Familiar with his offense?
Yeah. I’ve watched him when he was in the league. We haven’t faced him at all, I’ve never coached against a Jedd Fisch team since I’ve been in school, so I’ve never faced his offense.
How much input do you have into the defensive game plan?
I meet with those guys and talk about what I’ve seen and they present what they’re doing and we go over everything.
How dangerous is a winless team desperate for a win?
That’s a great question for you. That fits right into your wheelhouse, so you tell me how to think about that, big-picture guy. I’m asking you.
I would say they're very dangerous
Why is that very dangerous, cause your theory is it’s all momentum-based, so how does that work?
They need to get the momentum
But how does one get one if they don’t have it because you say it’s all about momentum and what happened in the past. This is why, I’ve been waiting for this question.
You've got to get it and then keep it, they just have to get it
Then they are very dangerous, to answer your question.
Good outings even though they haven't won?
Yeah, I’ll go into that right now. They had 31 first downs against Oregon, they were down 24-19 in the fourth quarter. They also had 31 first downs and five turnovers—what if they don’t have the five turnovers, how many more [points] do they have? They’re an explosive offensive team, I think Donnie Brown is one of the defensive coaches in the country, he’s been successful when he was at Boston College, Maryland, Michigan—everywhere he’s been. They’re a well-coached team, so it’s like anything, you turn the tape on and look at them and you can tell if a team is a good team and that’s a good team. Now, they’ve turned the ball over and we all know in college football if you’re turning the ball over more than your opponent, normally you’re on the down side of that, but the team’s competitive and they play very hard and the kids know we’re going to get everything we get when we go down there on Saturday night.
Outgained three of four opponents?
Yeah. Exactly. They’ve been productive, they’re still trying to figure out who’s playing. He has played three different kids. The kid right now from South Florida is dynamic from a legs standpoint, so he can beat you running the football too, so we have to prepare for it and they’re very multiple on offense and they’re very multiple on defense, so it’s going to be a really big test for us on Saturday.
Difficult for Chase Artopoeus to emulate several different QBs with scout team?
Nah. We’re preparing for the quarterback that’s played the last couple of games. I would be surprised if there’s another quarterback in there, but we do have to prepare for all, it’s the same as anybody, but the multiplicity is what they run for plays and the diversity of the other personnel groups that come in with no tight ends to three tight ends to a tight end and a fullback to a pro set to some of those things, that’s the multiplicity. And it’s the same thing on defense—they run multiple personnel groups on defense and try to get the right personnel groups in so our guys can simulate it the right way. Our scout squad players have done a really good job this week on Monday and Tuesday but we need to continue that because that is difficult when you face a team that gives you so many looks both offensively and defensively.
Artopoeus wearing scout team player of the week yellow jersey? Good for defense to be going against him?
He’s been great. He’s sharp, he’s been here for a couple of years, he’s a really intelligent quarterback but he also takes a lot of pride in giving the proper look and that’s the hardest thing for any scout team player because we may teach it one way but the other team teaches it a different way but you’ve got to kind of forget about what we’re doing and think about what they’re doing and make sure we get the proper look and Chase takes a lot of pride in that, he’s done a really nice job with that ever since he’s been here.
What has Clemens done for him to start over Gaines at center?
Well Jon's starting at right guard for us, so Jon is starting. Duke's sharp, he can set our front four, he's very athletic, he does a lot of really good things. I think the one thing tough thing for Duke is he had one bad snap so everybody thinks – but overall in that game, he graded out probably the highest on the offensive line and played really, really well for us. It's kind of like an official – when you see one bad call, was that an entire game of bad calls? No, it was just one bad call. If a DB gets beat over the top once, oh boy, that corner's not very good. Well, he could've graded out at 95% but he got beat once. In Duke's situation, he had one bad snap, but that was it. So I think we're really pleased with how Duke is playing for us at center.
O-line more effective with Gaines at RG?
Jon's really athletic, he's got a really good guard body. We pull our guards, we get them into space a lot, and that's what Jon does a really, really good job of. He's very athletic, he's probably the most athletic guard we have, so we can do a lot of different things when Jon's in there.
Preparing for Fisch's trademark trick plays?
Well we just go through what they run and we have a glossary of our guys from a scout standpoint and then percentage-wise of how much that happens. I think sometimes you can focus too much on it and say 'Hey, we're gonna worry about all the trick plays,' but then you get beat by regular inside zone cause you didn't spend enough time on it. So there's a certain percentage breakdown when you go through your cutups. We got four games on them, so what percentage is it of base plays, what percentage of it is exotic plays, and then you work that into your practice schedule.
Allowing points on 40% of defensive possessions?
I think everything's on a game-to-game basis. Sometimes you can look at those statistics and who do you play that's really good. We played Fresno and then the stop rate's gonna be lower in the Fresno game than it is in the Hawaii game, so I don't think you overlook what we do in individual games and the biggest thing for us on the defensive side is the X plays, that's what I think we're really concerned with. We've given up too many chunk plays and chunk plays are the big things cause if you do get an X play within a drive, then it usually results in points so you gotta be able to stop the X plays.
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