WATCH: Chip Kelly Breaks Down What Went Wrong in UCLA's Loss to Arizona State
UCLA football coach Chip Kelly talked to the media following his team’s 42-23 loss to Arizona State on Saturday night.
CHIP KELLY
Not a lot of pressure on Daniels?
They did a good job. You know, you’ve got to give them credit first and foremost and Jayden’s obviously the most athletic kid we’ve faced so far this season in terms of being able to escape and tried to be conscious of our rush lanes with him, you know he’s different than some of the other kids we’ve played because if he does squirt loose, which he did a couple of times, he can hurt you, so give them credit, I thought their line played really well. When you see them in person they did a really good job of protecting him and then when things did break down and we did a good job of getting after him, he has the ability to squirt out of that and made some plays with his feet.
Eight penalties for 89 yards?
No question. Unacceptable. We’ve got to clear that up and we talked about it briefly in the locker room after the game and we have to learn how to play with emotion, not let emotion play with us. I think some of them were out of frustration and you just can’t do that against a good football team. You know, we gave them too many freebies today and that’s on us.
Fourth down decision in fourth quarter?
Yeah, you know, we had the ball inside the one-yard line or close to the one-yard line and felt like we could get it in but they made a play and we didn’t.
Play call?
It was a run option.
ASU averaged 9 yards per play, you averaged 5.2 – was that the difference?
Yeah. I think the ex [explosive] plays on the defensive side of the ball really hurt us, those two big long passes. We had some depth issues at safety today and they did a good job of exploiting that, taking advantage of that, you have to give them credit, they knew what we had in there and then they went after it.
Churchwell and Lake hurt?
Yeah, Kenny was out, Kenny was unavailable, he tried to play in the beginning and Q gave a valiant effort but he wasn’t 100%, so.
Gave up big plays over the top against Stanford and now ASU?
Yeah, it’s a combination of both, you know, I think you’ve got to be tighter in your coverage and you have to generate a better pass rush so the quarterback doesn’t have enough time to push it all down the field like that, but we’ve got to kind of shore up our safety position right now.
No points in second half, how disappointing?
Yeah, we moved the ball, it’s very disappointing, you know, but I think there’s a couple of penalties on the offensive side of the ball that really hurt some drives and then to get the ball in their tight like we did and to come away with none, we’ve got to do a better job and I think we played well I thought on offense in the first half, did not play well on offense in the second half.
Dorian's performance?
Yeah, I think Dorian obviously is a threat with his legs, they were doing a couple of things coverage-wise to try to take some guys away, double them, trying to get Kyle and Greg in bracket and some of those things and I think Dorian did a really good job of recognizing that and if they’re doing that, they don’t have anybody left for him, but they did a good job of mixing it up, sometimes they did have a guy spying on Dorian and then he’s got to make sure he goes through his progressions and throws the ball, I thought for where he was and how he trained all week long, he’s just a tough guy that you’ve got to give him credit, you know he’s not 100% but he’s battling out there and I thought he played well.
Dorian's running designed or no?
They weren’t designed runs, they were drop back passes where coverage-wise dictated that no one was on the quarterback so I think he exploited that. So no, they weren’t designed runs.
Dorian doing too much?
I think it depends on how people play you and what they’re going to try to do and take away from you. It’s good that you have a quarterback that has the ability to beat you with his feet when you’re going to try to take away or double some receivers. Then you gotta see if some of the guys who are singled can open up and get free or can the quarterback hurt you with his legs so I thought there were a few times there when Dorian made some really good decisions in taking off and picking up first downs with his legs.
Beyond penalties, what made the offense stop working?
It was the same thing I think, when you get those penalties and I don’t think you can say “beyond the penalties.” Those penalties put you back and then all of the sudden, you’re playing in really long down and distances, it’s hard. It’s a lot easier to convert first and 10 to second and four then you go to second and 24, now we’ve got a long uphill battle against a good team that’s got some good players on that side of the ball. So I think we made it a lot more difficult on ourselves and I think that’s the difference between the two halves. But some of those, the holdings, the personal foul penalties, things like that just set us back and I think we like to play when we’re in first down, we’re moving, we’re playing downhill football, but I think we played uphill football in the second half and that’s directly a result of what we did. It wasn’t what they did, it was really what we call SIWs — self inflicted wounds — and we have to clean that up, but you’re not going to compete with really good teams when you’re hurting yourselves, you shoot yourselves in the foot, we gotta clear that up.
Hard to pull things together after disappointing loss?
I mean, we go on one-week deals. We’re just going to get ready and prepare — we’ll make the corrections from this game on Monday and then implement the game plan and get ready to play Arizona, who played Oregon tough the week before, so every week’s a battle in this league and you don’t really look at records, you don’t really talk about it. We talk about it with our players all the time, you pick your head up at the end of the year and see where you are, but we’re not talking about conference play, we don’t talk about conference record. It’s really irrelevant right now in the first week of October. We gotta get back on track and we have to prepare to go play Arizona down in Arizona.
Duke Clemens at center?
Duke filled in for Sam before, Duke actually played at Stanford and played center and did a really nice job against Stanford so we just continued with that lineup. We felt like Jon at guard and Duke at center was a good set up for us and again, he played really well at Stanford the week before so we just capitalized on that.
First time losing by a lot in a while, feel any different than the close ones?
A loss is a loss. I don’t think there’s no consolation whether it was close or not, you try to decipher it and learn from it and that’s what our process will be tomorrow when we break down the film as coaches and when we start our meetings on Monday.
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