The Bruins’ coached doubled down on his takes about time slots while also breaking down how the Sun Devils’ offense has changed as of late.
UCLA football coach Chip Kelly spoke with the media ahead of Wednesday morning’s practice session at the Wasserman Football Center. Kelly talked about new Arizona State starting quarterback Trenton Bourguet, the Sun Devils’ tempo on the offensive side of the ball, how their defense has changed since Herm Edwards was fired, what stands in the Bruins way in regards to exposure for late-night games and what goes into some unorthodox cross-sport training activities at practice.
How has Bourguet – however you say it…
That’s a – I was gonna ask you guys. I don’t know exactly how to pronounce it.
There’s a G…
It could be a silent G.
How has Bourguet elevated their offense?
I’ll tell you what, he’s impressive to watch on film. He’s a really, really good decision-maker, the ball comes out of his hands quick. You know, I think the teams—the two games he played against Washington and Colorado—you try to blitz him and the ball’s out before you can get to him. He’s got a real good understanding of what they’re trying to do offensively. He throws a really, really accurate ball, but I think his best strength is his decision-making. He seems like he made all the right decision the other night—I mean, he threw for 435 yards the other night, it was impressive to watch him on film, so it comes down to our front and our coverage. We’ve got to disrupt the timing because they played with great timing the other night and that’s a thing you’ve really got to be conscious of is we’ve got to disrupt the routes and then we’ve got to generate a pass rush.
Anything that changes with their playcalling with him?
I think they threw a little bit more with him in. Emory’s a really good athlete and there’s probably a little bit more of a designed quarterback run with Emory in there. There were more drop-back passes in the Colorado game with [Bourguet] in there, so I think it changes slightly in terms of the play calling. But he’s as good of a decision-maker as we’ve seen, at least this year, that we’ll face, so I think it’s going to be all 11 on the defensive side of the ball playing pass defense. But any time any team throws in a conference game for over 400 yards then you’re doing something right, so that’s got our full attention in terms of our defensive guys in terms of getting ready and getting prepared for these guys.
Has the tempo in their offense changed? Saw some stats that said they were snapping the ball five seconds quicker last game?
I mean, they are, they do, that’s one of their weapons in their arsenal and he seems like he’s got a pretty good command of it, so it’s just something you have to prepare for. It’s not 100%, but yeah it did seem like they rans a little bit more tempo in the Colorado game than they did in previous games.
They changed coverage schemes to more man, does that show up on film?
I think this defense started when Herm got there and Marvin Lewis and Donnie Henderson’s been around for a long time, one of the really, really smart football minds out there and I think they’re running a lot of NFL-style coverages, so sometimes it may be zone and it looks like man, so maybe there’s that. When people are breaking it down, to the naked eye you would say, “Hey that’s man coverage’ but it’s actually zone principles in man coverage, they don’t really let guys run free and they do a good job from that standpoint but I think the numbers, we break down every game so I think there is a fair amount of man in there, I couldn’t tell you that the numbers are up, it’s similar to what they’ve done there since Herm and Marvin have been there.
With the 7:30 games limiting exposure, is there anything the school can do to generate it?
Nah, I think the issue is, and I actually worked at ESPN for a year, so when the clock strikes midnight on Saturday night it turns into the NFL, so when you turn on TVs Sunday morning, they’re not showing highlights of the day before. The ability to get your games on highlights is to play earlier games during the day and then you can continue to see them throughout the day on Saturday but once it gets to Sunday, Sunday is the NFL day, so that’s where I think the—and I don’t know if people understood what I was saying about that—is that if you play late at night, no one gets to see you play because those highlights aren’t generated. We can generate them on our website, but that doesn’t get out to the masses. It’s like David Shaw had mentioned to me, Christian McCaffrey in the year that he broke Barry Sanders’ all-purpose record by a ton, they played eight of their 12 games after 10:30 on the East Coast. He didn’t win the Heisman Trophy. Was that one of the reasons? It probably could be and that’s what I mean about the exposure to the rest of the country, so that’s just the nature of if you played late games on the West Coast whether you’re in the Pac-12 or whether you’re in the Mountain West—you know, I mentioned Jake Haener the other day and I think he’s as good of a quarterback as I’ve seen and I don’t know if the rest of the country has seen Jake Haener because of the time slots that they’re in also and that’s part of the exposure. … Is the rain going to stay away, guys? We had to look at a couple of weather apps this morning to see what we were going to go through but I think we’re going to be OK, so.
You had a volleyball out here at practice?
We use a volleyball—good question—in a lot of our punt block stuff because it’s easier, you see the ball when you’re kicking it off the ball, it’s also really good when you’re spiking the ball and trying to save it from going into the end zone, you can kind of send it to different spots. Sometimes you’re trying to get a football to go this way but because of the shape it bounces a different way, but you can send in a different direction, so it’s just something we use a lot in special teams so our guys can either A)in the punt block aspect of it or B) trying to tap balls back in when they’re trying to save the ball from going into the end zone.
JonJon Vaughns shadow boxing, three sports for him?
No, K.B. does that with a lot of our guys, Ken has our kids do that a little bit. It just loosens you up from a core standpoint, so if you see KB has those boxing glove hand things and we use them at DB so they don’t hold a little bit, but that’s just kind of a warmup thing for us.
No three-sport athlete?
What’s that? No, let’s just keep him at two right now, keep him at two.
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