Once upon a time, the whole point of hiring Chip Kelly was acquiring whatever X’s and O’s were floating around in his supposedly brilliant offensive mind. And at a certain moment in college football history, that mind was not just brilliant, it was revolutionary and disruptive to the point where he almost won a national championship at Oregon.
But now? Now, football is different. And maybe Kelly is different. Or just not as good as he used to be. Or perhaps he’s completely out of ideas.
Whatever the reason, can Kelly still be considered an offensive genius if it’s a rare occurrence for him to put together an elite offense?
In his first four years at UCLA, Kelly’s offenses finished 75th, 65th, 21st and 30th nationally. Last year, the Bruins popped up to No. 4, averaging 503 yards per game behind terrific production from quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson and running back Zach Charbonnet.
That wasn’t a trend, though. It was an outlier. Before this weekend, UCLA ranked 45th in yards per play and badly needed its defense to dominate just to be competitive against solid opponents.
But as bad as UCLA’s offense looked at times earlier in the season with highly-regarded but mistake-prone freshman quarterback Dante Moore at the helm, it has completely cratered without him. Moore was benched for a stretch in October and got hurt early last week against Arizona. Since then, UCLA has scored just 17 points in nearly two full games. That has translated to a pair of losses, including Saturday’s 17-7 embarrassment in the Rose Bowl against Arizona State.
Yes, it was a major problem for UCLA that Moore and backup Ethan Garbers were out with injuries. But Arizona State was 2-7 coming into this game and didn’t show up at all last week in a 55-3 loss to Utah. You’d think UCLA would have enough depth by this point in Kelly’s tenure to just out-talent a team like Arizona State with a first-year coach in Kenny Dillingham. But you’d be wrong. UCLA’s defense held the Sun Devils to 250 yards but the offense fumbled on ASU’s 26, didn’t convert a fourth-and-goal from 1 yard out and missed on another fourth-and-1 inside the 10. That’s a classic recipe for losing to a bad team.
So UCLA is now 6-4 and will be fortunate to eke out seven or eight wins, which now kind of seems like equilibrium for Kelly in Westwood. But is it also the ceiling on UCLA, which has long been one of college football’s biggest underachievers?
The hope in hiring Kelly was that he could break that ceiling and regularly get the Bruins into the upper echelon. But after three losing seasons to start his tenure, he’s only made a small leap to the fringe of the Top 25. UCLA is going to be solid or even good at times under Kelly. But if it’s going to be a true contender, the Bruins need Kelly to be the elite offensive force he was more than a decade ago.
The way they’ve looked the last couple weeks, it’s fair to wonder if that’s even possible anymore. And that’s why UCLA is No. 1 in the Misery Index, a weekly measurement of which fan bases are feeling the most angst.
Four more in misery
Duke: There’s a segment of fans (albeit in a different sport) that will note the irony in Duke having a referee grievance. But that’s a very legitimate takeaway for Blue Devils fans after a 47-45 loss to hated North Carolina in the second overtime. Though every game will have its 50/50 officiating moments or flat-out bad calls, you can truly zero in on something that happened with 2:32 remaining in this game. With Duke holding a 29-26 lead, North Carolina quarterback Drake Maye threw a ball just short of the end zone that ended up smack in between one player from each team, the players wrestling for it on the ground. Duke’s defenders immediately signaled for an interception, as their guy had ultimately pried the ball away. But after a short conversation, the officiating crew determined that receiver Bryson Nesbit had possession on the ground before the ball came loose.
It was a tight call, but replay appeared to show that Duke had in fact come down with an interception. One problem: The ACC officiating crew never stopped the game to have the replay booth take a look that was worthy of how close that play was. Even if it wouldn’t have been ultimately overturned, that kind of play is precisely why college football’s replay system exists. At minimum, it had to be reviewed.
But it wasn’t, so North Carolina maintained possession despite the protests of Duke coach Mike Elko and ultimately scored a touchdown. If an interception had been awarded, Duke likely would have won. Instead, it lost a heartbreaker to the rival it wants to beat most and a grievance that will last for years.
Washington State: The final year of the Pac-12 as we knew it was supposed to be bittersweet for the Cougars. As angry as their fan base and administration was about getting left behind in a league whose future is still uncertain, the 2023 season projected as a great opportunity to shove it in their faces on the field and maybe even get in conference title contention. Instead, it has been a massive disappointment. A veteran, talented Wazzu team with an electric quarterback in Cameron Ward is now 4-6 after a 42-39 loss at Cal. Unless the Cougars beat Colorado and then win at Washington in what promises to be an emotional Apple Cup, they won’t be going to the postseason. Meanwhile, coach Jake Dickert earlier this week told reporters Wazzu was “not even competitive in some aspects of NIL,” and said it would be open season for other programs to poach his players once the transfer portal opens.
On one hand, the appropriate response to that is, “That’s life.” If you want to be a better program, get the money together to make it happen. On the other, the entire situation is already sad enough for Washington State’s passionate fan base. A bad season, a crumbling conference with no appealing place to land and potentially a roster exodus? Yikes.
Minnesota: If you can’t be good in this Big Ten, and specifically this Big Ten West, your odds of being good once USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington are imported into the league next year aren’t too great. But it’s not like PJ Fleck is a newcomer or is trying to rebuild a broken program. This is Year 7. And if you set aside the funky 2020 COVID season, it’s likely to be Fleck’s worst record since 2018 and certainly his least fun campaign since arriving in the Twin Cities. Minnesota was actually in good shape at 5-3 just a couple weeks ago, but consecutive losses to Illinois at home (27-26) and on the road to Purdue (49-30) have exposed the Gophers as a team going nowhere and a program with some real questions to ask itself going into the offseason.
‘Bad game, not a bad life, not a bad program, not a bad team, just a bad game,’ Fleck told reporters after the beatdown at Purdue. At least on social media, the fans didn’t seem too impressed with that assessment. Because it’s not just one bad game − it’s about four of them this year. And it may not be a bad program, but it’s not a compelling one right now. And it’s not far enough above the bad line to be comfortable.
Oklahoma State: What would you do the week after you said goodbye to a 120-year-old rivalry with one of the best wins in the modern history of the school? You’d probably be inclined to spend more of it celebrating than preparing for the next opponent. That appears to be what happened in Stillwater, as the Cowboys followed up their epic win in the final Bedlam with a 45-3 nap at UCF. Mike Gundy basically blamed the performance on bad coaching and 50/50 plays, but it looks like a classic letdown after a big win. But it’s also a really bad time to lay an egg since Oklahoma State previously had the inside track to make the Big 12 championship game. It’s still a good season for the Cowboys, but it’s a frustrating result to not build on the momentum from beating Oklahoma the week before.
Miserable, but not miserable enough
Nebraska: A couple weeks ago, we were toasting the job Matt Rhule had done to so quickly rinse the stench of the Scott Frost misadventure of the last several years. Now, we’re wondering what the heck happened to bring the incompetent vibe back to Lincoln. At 5-3 with a very soft finishing schedule, it looked like Nebraska was a lock for a bowl game and maybe a decent one. Instead, the Huskers failed to show up last week at Michigan State and regressed even further in a 13-10 loss to Maryland. Ultimately, Nebraska’s quarterback play is what it is — and it’s not even close to good enough. But with the way Nebraska had been playing in other areas, Michigan State and Maryland were very winnable games. Instead, the Huskers lost both and are running out of chances to set 2023 in concrete as a positive season. They’ll probably be able to eke it out next week at Wisconsin, which is struggling badly with everything right now. But if not? Good luck trying to score against Iowa in the season finale.
Vanderbilt: Fans of this program have seen many moments over the years that looked like the bottom, but there’s always a deeper abyss in Nashville. Decade after decade, coach after coach, Vanderbilt finds new ways to test the loyalty of the few thousand who still really care about whether this program can compete consistently in the SEC. But right now, with Clark Lea at the helm, relevance seems as far away as ever. The Commodores’ 47-6 loss to South Carolina was their ninth straight this season, and Lea’s 21st SEC loss in 23 attempts. Vanderbilt has had lots of really bad years, but it usually finds a way to sneak in a conference win or two. Unless Vandy beats Tennessee, Lea will own two of Vanderbilt’s seven winless SEC seasons this century.
Louisiana Tech: Sonny Cumbie, the second-year coach, appears very much in over his head here. Not only is he 6-17 at a school that previously had a decent amount of success in Conference USA, he decided this week was a good time to revoke the access of one of the few reporters who care at all about Louisiana Tech. Ben Carlisle, the publisher of a website that follows the team, wrote Tuesday that Cumbie called him over during the open part of practice, berated him in front of the team for not being supportive enough and told him he wasn’t welcome there anymore. A few days later, Cumbie proceeded to lose at home 42-27 to previously 1-8 Sam Houston State. Advantage, Carlisle.
UAB: There were no shortage of skeptics about UAB’s decision to hire former NFL quarterback and broadcaster Trent Dilfer, who had no coaching experience other than four years at a private high school in Nashville. And the thing about skeptics is … sometimes they are correct. UAB, a program that had gone to six consecutive bowl games, now sits at 3-7 after a brutal 31-6 loss at Navy. And hilariously, the game ended with Dilfer calling a timeout with 11 seconds left in an attempt to score one last touchdown from the 10-yard line only to get stuffed on the next three plays. Maybe Dilfer will figure it out in the long run, but the early returns have been awful. UAB had a good program going under Bill Clark, who walked away in the summer of 2022 to deal with back surgery and a subsequent long recovery. The Blazers didn’t need to go outside the box, but they did. If the results don’t improve quickly, it will look like a bad bet.