Breaking Down UCLA Football's Potential Offensive Coordinator Candidates

With Chip Kelly running the show, the vacant spot is more of a title and salary grab than a schematic role.

Unlike the open defensive coordinator position, the Bruins' next offensive coordinator probably won't make or break the next era of football in Westwood.

UCLA football offensive line coach and offensive coordinator Justin Frye, who held the latter title for the past three seasons, has moved on to Ohio State, leaving both positions open on the team's offensive staff. Coach Chip Kelly is effectively the offensive coordinator for the Bruins and has been ever since he arrived, installing the offense he wants to and acting as the primary playcaller in the process.

Still, the offensive coordinator position serves as a chance to give a position coach a dual-role and pay bump, as well as the prestige that comes with being a Power Five coordinator learning under the tutelage of Kelly. With that taken into account, here are the four most interesting options UCLA could be looking at to be its next offensive coordinator.

Tim Drevno, UCLA

As of Thursday, all signs point towards Drevno becoming the next offensive line coach for the Bruins.

247Sports' Bruin Report Online was the first to report UCLA was preparing to hire Drevno in the position earlier in the week, and the reports were only further bolstered when Drevno was seen out on the road doing recruiting visits. Of course, teams are permitted to send analysts like Drevno out on recruiting trips if they have holes on their full-time coaching staffs, as is the case with the Bruins, but the pieces seem to line up well.

Drevno would be taking over for Frye in coaching the offensive line, so it would only make sense if he was a candidate to take over the offensive coordinator title as well.

Prior to spending the 2021 season as an offensive analyst for UCLA, Drevno was the offensive line coach and run game coordinator at USC. Drevno had previous stops at UNLV, San Jose State, Stanford and the San Francisco 49ers as well, and he was the offensive line coach and offensive coordinator at San Diego from 2003 to 2006 and at Michigan from 2015 to 2017.

Drevno is already familiar with the system the Bruins are running, and he has a built-in relationship with Kelly. Add to that his experience in the Pac-12, Big Ten and NFL, and Drevno seems like an easy fit to take over, even if his stints at USC and Michigan didn't end in particularly pretty fashion.

DeShaun Foster, UCLA

Tight ends coach Derek Sage might have been in line for the internal promotion if he hadn't left to become Nevada's offensive coordinator. His replacement, Duke's Jeff Faris, might have been a fit as well if it weren't for the official team press release of his hiring Wednesday morning omitting anything about an offensive coordinator title.

So with Frye and Sage gone and quarterbacks coach Ryan Gunderson and receivers coach Jerry Neuheisel just finishing their first years as full-time coaches in the program, the longest-tenured member of the Bruins' offensive coaching staff is running backs coach DeShaun Foster.

Foster was a record-setting running back at UCLA in the late 1990s and early 2000s before a successful NFL career with the Carolina Panthers. After spending five years as a undergraduate and graduate assistant under Jim Mora, Foster left to become the running backs coach at Texas Tech under Kliff Kingsbury in 2016, only to return a year later and become the running backs coach in Westwood.

As part of Mora, Kingsbury and Kelly's coaching tree, Foster has learned from multiple successful head coaches and coordinators over the past decade. In terms of the position groups he managed himself, Foster has helped bring Joshua Kelley, Demetric Felton, Brittain Brown and Zach Charbonnet to prominence, all while being a solid recruiter out of the high school ranks and transfer portal.

Foster may not be a candidate to become a coordinator most places, but if UCLA wants to reward his loyalty and success leading the running backs, giving him the offensive coordinator position would be the best way to do so.

Ethan Young, UCLA

With Faris and supposedly Drevno joining the staff, all of the offensive position vacancies will be filled in the near future. Unless the less experienced Gunderson or Neuheisel get the nod, that means the coordinator role could go to someone whose sole responsibility is to be coordinator.

That would be an interesting move, considering Kelly will be the playcaller regardless, but he could also use it to promote an analyst or just get another voice he likes into the room. After all, one of the reported holdups that Kelly eventually got his way on in his extension negotiations was an increased salary pool for his staff. Depending on how much was added to that pool, perhaps there is enough money to add another full-time member of the staff on top of the position coaches already in place.

While he is an unlikely option and very much a dark horse, the most likely candidate should Kelly go down that path would probably be director of player personnel Ethan Young.

Young has been a part of Kelly's staff since the beginning, first as a director of strategic intelligence before moving over to his current role that covers a lot of recruiting duties. Young has a lot of experience in analytics and scouting for someone his age, and he also is the public face of the Bruins on the recruiting trail.

There were reports earlier in January that Young might have been in the running to take over for Sage as tight ends coach. After getting passed over for that job, UCLA may try to mend the fence by giving him a fancy new title and big new contract. Maybe he was passed over there because they had different plans for him, or maybe it was because they decided he wasn't fit for a more hands-on, on-the-field coaching role – it's impossible to know for sure.

Young's Xs and Os are a mystery, and it would be quite the risky move to make someone in their late 20s a Power Five coordinator for their first on-field coaching job. Still, Kelly is like many coaches in the sense that he likes to surround himself with familiar, friendly faces, and Young could fill that void should Kelly decide to go down this unorthodox path.

Chip Kelly, UCLA

This option could also be designated as "None," since it's unlikely Kelly would actually get the offensive coordinator title on top of his head coaching job.

This is the route Kelly took in 2018, his first year in Westwood, as the Bruins were without an official offensive coordinator that season. Strategically, this would be a very normal move to make, and it didn't really hurt UCLA in terms of scheme four years ago.

However, what would make this an interesting move in 2022 is that Kelly reportedly went to bat to get a larger salary pool for his assistants over the past month. One of the ways he could spend that money on coaches he respects and likes to have around would be to give one of them the offensive coordinator title and boost their pay along with it.

But maybe Kelly wants to give everyone a small raise instead of shelling out for a big raise for one coach. In that case, he can certainly forget about the offensive coordinator search and deal with it all himself in name and in practice.

Again, this decision has more to do with salaries and titles than it does with scheme and playcalling, since that will stay the same regardless of what Kelly decides to do here. It isn't as critical of a process as the defensive coordinator search, but it could still have lasting effects on the staff moving forward.

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