All Bruins UCLA Football Players of the Game: Week 0 vs. Hawaii
A lot of things went right for the Bruins on Saturday.
UCLA football (1-0) won in all three phases of the game in its wire-to-wire victory over Hawaii, opening the year with a nonconference win for the first time under coach Chip Kelly. Taking a look at each unit individually, here are the three student-athletes who have earned the All Bruins UCLA Football Players of the Game awards.
Offensive Player of the Week: RB Zach Charbonnet
Looking at the long list of UCLA debuts through the years, Charbonnet's certainly ranks near the top.
The transfer from Michigan only got six carries, but he made the most of his somewhat limited touches by cashing in with 106 yards and three touchdowns. All three of those touchdowns came in the first 20 minutes of the game, meaning Charbonnet was the driving force behind the Bruins' 31-3 lead right out of the gates.
Both the gross and per carry stats look great for Charbonnet, and it's funny how easily he seemed to overshadow Brittain Brown and his 78 yards and a touchdown on 6.0 yards per carry.
Charbonnet managed to stand out even more with the eye test, however.
That one 47-yard touchdown in which Charbonnet shook off a few defenders and turned a solid play into an iconic one probably would have been enough to satisfy the fans and media members who have been hyping him up all offseason long.
Adding in two 21-yard scores only took him to that next level, and as expected based on both the box score and social media reaction, Charbonnet wins this award by a landslide.
Defensive Player of the Week: DL Datona Jackson
The Bruins were already starting to separate, and then Jackson set them up to make it an early blowout.
UCLA was up 10-0, having just scored its first touchdown of the day on a Zach Charbonnet 21-yard run. The defense had already forced two 3-and-outs and was making sure Hawaii quarterback Chevan Cordeiro was having as little fun as possible.
Cordeiro was getting knocked down nearly every time he dropped back, and even when he escaped untouched, his passes were knocked down. Defensive end Mitchell Agude and outside linebacker Bo Calvert blocked Cordeiro's passes with ease, but it was Jackson who turned another poorly-timed Cordeiro throw into an extra possession for the Bruins.
By leaping up and snagging the ball, returning it 11 yards and putting the UCLA offense inside the 10, Jackson set up a touchdown run from Brittain Brown that would make it 17-0 Bruins. If the Rainbow Warriors had instead gone down and scored a touchdown of their own, it would have been 10-7. Instead, the Bruins were up 17-0 barely halfway through the first quarter and they never looked back.
Jackson finished with three tackles, 0.5 sacks and the one interception. All of that production, outside one of the tackles, came in the first quarter, when the UCLA defense set the tone and set its offense up to run away with it. Jackson certainly played a major part in that, and he did enough to earn UCLA Defensive Player of the Week honors.
Special Teams Player of the Week: LB Ale Kaho
Kaho got a good amount of snaps on defense, with Kelly relying on heavy rotations amid the Pasadena heat.
Where he really made his mark, however, was in punt coverage.
Hawaii got stopped in yet another 3-and-out on its first drive of the half, right after quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson plunged a dagger into their heart with a 4-yard touchdown pass to receiver/running back Kazmeir Allen. Instead of shanking a punt, accidentally kneeing the ball or just sending it deep like had happened earlier in the game, the Kaho made sure the Rainbow Warriors' special teams performance went from bad to worse.
Kaho came around the left side completely untouched and basically blocked the punt with his chest he was there so early. The ball deflected perfectly into the end zone, where tight end David Priebe secured it for six.
Kelly raved about Kaho's special teams abilities after the game, saying that was one of his most reliable traits to this point in his career. The block wasn't just any block, either.
It came against one of the best teams at getting the ball away cleanly in the country over the past decade-plus. Hawaii hadn't conceded a blocked punt in 152 games, until it came face-to-face with Kaho.
And for bucking that trend and gifting his team some free points, Kaho stand out as the Bruins' top special teamer in Week 0.
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