Press conference tidbits
UCLA coach Rick Neuheisel met with the media today, and he re-iterated what he said Sunday, that "coaches might have to dial back a little bit in terms of the (game) plan."
Neuheisel, in stressing the positive, said he was "very excited about our effort."
On the injury front, Neuheisel said if offensive lineman Micah Reed (knee) returned this week, he would do so at guard, likely spelling Darius Savage and Scott Glicksberg, because Jake Dean "is doing a nice job" at center.
In the LA Times article, Neuheisel said that defenses are stacking the box to stop our run. He and Chow also said that the deep ball was not there. How do defenses take away our run game and our deep game? Do we even have deep routes? Who'd be our best deep route receiver? I'd love to see a hitch-n-go with a pump fake from Craft and a deep strike connection.
I agree! Even an incomplete deep ball would send a message.
GO BRUINS! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!
Those are the same comments Neuheisel and Chow made after Washington State, and several other games this season.
Jake Dean's snaps seem to be consistently low when in shotgun formation. It looked as if Craft had to reach down to catch the ball and then straighten back up. That can't be the optimal place for the center to put the ball when there are so many other things the QB needs to be concentrating on.
One opinion I heard was that opposing teams do not fear the long pass, thus the safety has the opportunity to come up near the line of scrimmage to place '8-in-the-box,' which results in the defense outmanning the offense. Very difficult to run when the defense has numbers like that.
And long passes have been called for Craft but either he is afraid to throw them based on his debacle in the first half with Tennessee, or is incapable of throwing them.