UCLA Football: Three takeaways from season-opening loss

The UCLA Football Bruins started the 2019 season the same way they started the 2018 season: with a loss to the Cincinnati Bearcats.

It must have felt like deja vu for the UCLA Football Bruins watching the Cincinnati Bearcats win another season-opening game against them. The 24-14 final score made it tantalizing close once again, much like the 26-17 margin of the year before. Yet once again, despite chances to get back into the game, the Bruins repeatedly shot themselves in the foot.

A road win on a Thursday night seemed like a tough task when looking at the Bruins schedule; last year the team was young and inexperienced leading to a tough season with just three wins. With another year under their belt, the Bruins did look better, but costly mistakes continued to cost the team.

These are the three takeaways from the Bruins loss:

Bad Quarterback Play

One game can’t tell you everything, but watching this loss it was fairly obvious the Bruins will only go as far as Dorian Thompson-Robinson will take them. We’ll let Thompson-Robinson assess his own performance (h/t ABC7 Sports):

“I was horrible,” Thompson-Robinson said. “We have to look at the film It was very disappointing, not only because we didn’t get the win but looking at these guys faces.”

Thompson-Robinson is not wrong. He only made eight completions on 26 attempts, many times throwing the ball into the ground or too high. The Bruins committed four turnovers all at the hands of Thompson-Robinson, who threw two interceptions and had two fumbles

The Bruins won’t go far if this game is the norm for Thompson-Robinson going forward.

Mistakes Galore

It would be unfair to put so much of the blame on just bad quarterback play, the Bruins loss was a total team effort.

The Bruins defense was tough and did force a couple of crucial turnovers, but the Bearcats were able to convert 8-16 on third down sustaining drives. Whenever the Bruins were driving or did make a positive gain, penalties stopped the momentum.

https://twitter.com/CFBONFOX/status/1167263807485300737?s=20

The Bruins committed nine penalties, losing 60 yards in the process. Some were just dumb, like at the end of the first half where a Josh Shaw interception was taken into scoring position but then got pulled back when Shaw committed a personal foul after the play for taunting.

The Bruins didn’t get any points as the game went into halftime and they made things worse by getting another personal foul before going into the locker room.

The Bruins were supposed to avoid these freshmen mistakes, it seems as sophomores they haven’t learned anything.

Depleted Roster

The Bruins didn’t make excuses for losing, but it should be noted that they were missing eight starters from last year either due to injury or academic issues.

The most notable absence was leading rusher Joshua Kelly, who either has a knee injury or an ankle injury, depending on what day of the week it is. Kelly was on the sideline and dressed but he never saw a snap.

Without Kelly and the ineffective quarterback play, the Bruins weren’t effective on the run. Averaging just 1.7 yards on the ground per play the Bruins were stopped by the Bearcats, who keyed in on the run when Thompson-Robinson couldn’t make the simple pass plays.

Last year the Bruins best stretch of games were when Kelly was carrying the rock, without him last night the Bruins looked pedestrian.

Moving forward

The UCLA Football Bruins come home for their next game, hopefully, for the sake of their fans, they improve their game or it will be a long day in the Southern California sun.