Tackling the issue
After surrendering 514 rushing yards in two season-opening losses to Kansas State and Stanford, UCLA buckled down against Houston and Texas, allowing just 108 rushing yards to the Cougars and 85 to the Longhorns.
The main difference: tackling.
The Bruins swarmed to the ball carrier on Saturday, three, four or even five defenders collapsing on Texas' magnificent skill position players.
Oak Park product Sean Westgate led the way at outside linebacker, totalling 11 tackles and forcing a fumble, but seven Bruins had more than five tackles.
"Our goal was just to tackle," Westgate said. "We knew if we missed tackles, these guys are way too good in the open field and they're gonna make plays. It was our goal in coming into this game; we tackled well and we ran to the ball. That's gonna be our trademark."
This is the best tackling and hardest hitting I've seen from UCLA since 13-9...
Route 66 #2! I had Ucla winning 28-21. Even I didn't see this coming! What a dominating perfomance! Now lets get another 20 game win streak going. Hell of a victory!
Ucla F! F! F!
Congrats to the team and the coaching staff for putting together this great great win...definitely the biggest so far in Rick's tenure...
With that said--I don't think we should be too overly excited about this. Why didn't we show this kind of passion and pride in those 2 losses? We've left A LOT on the field...
The run game is definitely awesome as a primary weapon...but we HAVE to be multi-dimensional...that's why Boise State is so hard to guard against. The passing game has GOT TO TURN AROUND...I don't get why a guy who had 3 300+ yds passing games last year looks uncomfortable in the pocket...and we have too much talent at the WR to be putting up these kind of passing #s...hopefully that can be corrected next week. The imbalance of our offensive stats is pretty ridiculous...
I know this was an exciting day...but the coaching staff needs to bring a level of consistency and breed a winning culture...I really hope the players understand that and not have a letdown next week. Remember guys--we've been MEDIOCRE for the last DECADE...whenever we had a great win...it was followed by horrendous losses and downturns. Most recently--look at what happened after 13-9. As you can see from the other games tonight..the Pac-10 is really really REALLY deep and talented...we still have a long road ahead. Yes, the season is turned around, but this was just one game--one beginning...hopefully it's a prelude to better results the rest of the season.