UCLA vs. Arizona State Week 5: Postgame Takeaways

Breaking down the most notable storylines that came out of the Bruins' loss to the Sun Devils on Saturday.

For the second time in a row, the Bruins got upset on their home turf.

UCLA football (3-2, 1-1 Pac-12) lost to Arizona State (4-1, 2-0) 42-23 at the Rose Bowl on Saturday. A close game through the first two quarters turned into a blowout down the stretch, and it serves up another key turning point for the Bruins, their coaches and their fans.

These are four of the biggest takeaways, narratives and questions to come out of Saturday's game.

No one thing cost UCLA the game

By nature of how they had lost their past few games, there was always a pretty clear "What if?" when it came to the Bruins.

Whether it was a single bad read, one bad fumble, a missed field goal, an ill-timed pick six or poor coverage on a single drive, it didn't take an expert to diagnose UCLA's errors in its five losses over the past two seasons. And once those holes had been identified, it was pretty easy to say if they hadn't happened, the Bruins would have come away with a win – their last five losses came by a combined 18 points.

Saturday was a different story.

Not only did UCLA lose by 19 points instead of one score, but so many things went wrong in the second half. Poor coverage, bad tackling, bad snaps, penalties on both sides of the ball, not finishing drives, head-scratching coaching decisions and so on and so forth.

Stopping Jayden Daniels would have helped, but it wouldn't have won the Bruins' the game given how they played on offense. And while Dorian Thompson-Robinson had some bad keepers and sacks late, he could have made all the plays in the fourth and it still wouldn't have been enough.

Thompson-Robinson keeping it on fourth down instead of handing it off to Charbonnet for a touchdown is the most clear moment, considering it would have made it a two-point game. But even then, the Sun Devils followed that up with a near-seven-minute touchdown drive anyways.

The second half was as bad as UCLA has looked since the 2019 Utah game. They were utterly and completely outplayed, and of course it happened when they had a chance to become the team to beat in the Pac-12.

Jerry Azzinaro has got to go

With all of that being said above, it's pretty clear the defense was horrible again on Saturday.

Almost midway through his fourth season in charge of the defense, Azzinaro's unit is allowing 321.4 passing yards per game after getting carved up by Daniels all night long. Daniels had come into the game struggling to throw the ball on anything other than button hooks and screens, but he was taking the top off UCLA's defense and making chunk play after chunk play between his long touchdowns.

The Bruins have also now allowed 40-plus points in two of their last three games.

This was supposed to be this defense's final form, utilizing their experience, returning talent and veteran transfers to put it all together into a unit that was at least respectable, if not pretty good. But again, Azzinaro's defense is costing his team games, and there has not been much improvement on the stat sheet or with the eye test three-and-a-half years into his tenure in Westwood.

Before Azzinaro arrived, UCLA had never allowed more than 274 passing yards per game in its 90 seasons of competition. Under Azzinaro, they are now on track to do it for the third year in a row.

Cutting ties with a defensive coordinator midseason is extremely rare, but drastic measures are required when things get this bad. If Kelly winds up sticking around past this season, Azzinaro returning alongside him would be a borderline crime with how horribly he's run things to this point. He can have the support of the guys in the locker room and he can have Kelly's complete trust, but it gets to a point where production and resume have to mean something, and Azzinaro's certainly don't belong to a Power Five defensive coordinator anymore (if they ever did).

Things might be just as bad under presumed replacement Brian Norwood, but at least at that point there would be a streamlined chain of command on that side of the ball.

Kelly canning Azzinaro in the middle of the 2021 season is not going to happen, though, even though it definitely should.

Fans, students deserve better

The announced attendance Saturday was only 40,522, so nothing great at all. On the surface, that's pretty bad, actually.

But one group of fans that showed up in droves was the student section.

The Den was literally overflowing, filling up both the new and old sections designated for students. It was the first home contest for UCLA since classes started, so it was good to see the student body eager to get out and support their team in a big game.

Those dedicated and rowdy young fans were treated to a brutal collapse in the second half, however, and it didn't take long for them to flood to the tunnels and get out of the Rose Bowl once the game started slipping away. Chances are, a lot of those students won't be tripping over themselves to get back on the Rooter Bus on Oct. 23 for the Oregon game, given what they had to witness the last time they made the trip.

A lot of college football programs can rely on their students to be a constant in their stadium. UCLA has some baseline of fans who will come to the Rose Bowl every time, but having a stadium nearly an hour away from campus makes it a real barrier to attending games.

If they're winning, students will make the trip and happily get out there to cheer and heckle and go nuts. If they're losing, that one-hour drive is enough to turn hundreds, if not thousands, of students off.

Offense really misses Mike Martinez

There are a lot of factors that played into the Bruins' struggles on offense, but it surely would have been nice for them to have their blocking specialist TE2 out there all night.

With Martinez going down against Fresno State and not appearing since, Kelly hasn't been able to run as many two-tight end sets as he did with Martinez at full strength. Without that extra blocker on the edge, Zach Charbonnet and Brittain Brown combined to average 3.8 yards per carry, compared to the 6.7 they were averaging entering Saturday.

What makes it worse is that the few times Kelly did roll out two tight ends, Michael Ezeike was once again a complete non-factor.

The one time he got a target, he bobbled a wide open catch and stumbled out of bounds when he could have given the Bruins a first down. If Ezeike can't thrive as a pass-catcher, he may as well not be out there at all, further discouraging Kelly from using 12 personnel.

And when facing an aggressive defense like the one Arizona State brought to the field Saturday night, that means Thompson-Robinson will be running for his life. That didn't hurt the Bruins too much in the first half, and Thompson-Robinson even got some good scrambles in the third quarter, but it caught up to him eventually and UCLA definitely could have used an extra blocker in pass protection too.

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