2011 UCLA Bruins Football Preview

While the city of Los Angeles waits for a professional football team to return, the UCLA Bruins are the only football players who can deliver a high-profile gridiron championship to the City of Angels. If UCLA is going to cause a stir in the first year of the Pac-12 Conference, an offensive guru will need to coach at a level worthy of his old reputation.

This is a year of opportunity for the Bruins, since crosstown rival USC will continue to live under the black cloud of a bowl ban and ineligibility for the Pac-12 South Division championship. If UCLA can somehow upend Utah and Arizona in the South or create enough mischief to get into a three-way tie with the right tiebreakers, the “other” L.A. football school could sneak into the league’s first championship game this December. In order to do that, however, the Bruins must shake off the sense of stagnation that has infested the program in recent times.

It has been a decade of mediocrity in Westwood. UCLA has just one 10-win season since 1998 and the folks in Los Angeles are beginning to wonder if Rick Neuheisel, a UCLA alum and a former quarterback coach in the NFL (with the Baltimore Ravens), is the right man for the job. The 2010 journey through autumn was a frustrating campaign to say the least. Embarrassing losses to Oregon (60-13) and Stanford (35-0) showed just how much the Bruins needed to grow. A blowout win at Texas (34-12) proved that UCLA had no business being in the gutter of the Pac-10. The more this program falls short of anything remotely resembling a high-quality record of achievement, the more the Angelinos grumble.

The 2011 season will tell us if UCLA has merely rearranged the deck chairs on the Titanic or shed its baggage. The Bruins lost two key defensive cogs to the NFL draft and welcome both a new offensive and defensive coordinator to town. Quarterback play was downright awful last season, the single biggest reason why UCLA has failed to make big forward strides as a program. (The second-biggest reason for the Bruins’ impoverishment on the field is that they haven’t been able to keep their quarterbacks healthy or upright.) The Bruins will need either Kevin Prince or Richard Brehaut to establish himself as the man in the offensive huddle. The offensive line needs to be able to usher Prince or Brehaut through a full season’s worth of tussles. All-Pac-10 (from last year, of course) running back Jonathan Franklin returns and will be relied on heavily. With seven offensive starters returning, the Bruins will have much more experience on their roster, a potential portal to new heights.

Though eight starters return on defense, UCLA will need some help from some talented yet inexperienced players. The schedule is favorable; the Bruins don’t have to face an Oregon team that could have put up 80 points against UCLA last season if it had not brought in its reserves well before the final few minutes. A home date against Texas in week three should show us if the Bruins are capable of competing this season in the Pac-12. Two weeks later at Stanford, we will see how far they have truly come.

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