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Pac-12 Week 4 Awards: Kyle Philips Earns Special Teams Player of the Week

In addition to grabbing two touchdowns on offense, UCLA's punt returner set his team up for an early score.

Sam Connon

Pac-12 Week 4 Awards: Kyle Philips Earns Special Teams Player of the Week
Pac-12 Week 4 Awards: Kyle Philips Earns Special Teams Player of the Week /

Conference play opened in full swing this weekend, and one Bruin collected some hardware amid the chaos.

The Pac-12 announced its weekly honors Monday, and No. 20 UCLA football (3-1, 1-0 Pac-12) receiver Kyle Philips won the Special Teams Player of the Week award following his team's win over Stanford on Saturday. Philips was also nominated for Offensive Player of the Week, while defensive back Qwuantrezz Knight was one of the nominees for Defensive Player of the Week after getting credited with seven tackles, 1.5 tackles for loss and 0.5 sacks.

On his first touch of the game, Philips brought a punt back 59 yards to set the Bruins up at the Cardinal's 12-yard line. A few runs later and UCLA had taken an early 7-0 lead thanks in large part to the favorable field position gifted to them by Philips.

Philips was only able to return two more punts since Stanford kept booting it out of bounds to avoid him. One return went for 10 yards, and the second was another solid gain that was ultimately wiped out by a holding penalty. He ended the day with 74 yards off of three returns.

For his career, Philips has caught 20 punts and returned them for an average of 19.5 yards, putting him narrowly behind Maurice Jones-Drew for highest average in UCLA history. Philips' 24-yard average return is nearly double his mark from 2020 and even a few yards higher than his 2019 figure as well.

Philips is the first Bruin to win the conference's special teams award since Demetric Felton earned it back in Sept. 2019. Felton won it the week UCLA beat Washington State, since he returned a kickoff for a touchdown in the game, but Philips returned a punt for a touchdown that very same night.

The Bruins got more than a few punt returns out of Philips on Saturday, however, as he also hauled in two touchdowns in the fourth quarter that helped put the game away following a Stanford comeback. Philips tallied 194 all-purpose yards in the performance.

The three total nominations for UCLA tied for sixth-most in the conference with Washington, Washington State and Arizona. Philips' win marked the third by a Bruin so far this season.

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Sam Connon
SAM CONNON

Sam Connon was the Publisher and Managing Editor at Sports Illustrated and FanNation’s All Bruins from 2021 to 2023. He is now a staff writer at Sports Illustrated and FanNation’s Fastball. He previously covered UCLA football, men's basketball, women's basketball, baseball, men's soccer, cross country and golf for The Daily Bruin from 2017 to 2021, serving as the paper's Sports Editor from 2019 to 2020. Connon has also been a contributor for 247Sports' Bruin Report Online, Rivals' BruinBlitz, Dash Sports TV, SuperWestSports, Prime Time Sports Talk, The Sports Life Blog and Patriots Country, Sports Illustrated and FanNation’s New England Patriots site. His work as a sports columnist has been awarded by the College Media Association and Society of Professional Journalists. Connon graduated from UCLA in June 2021 and is originally from Winchester, Massachusetts.

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