BruinMBA
Joined: 11/22/05 Posts: 4,723
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Posted Sun, Sep 04 11:47 am
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In response to UCLA game 1 reflections (UclanDoIt)
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My thoughts on your thoughts
1. A football game is like a 12-round boxing match. Some fighters are gonna come out hard those first 3 rounds. They're going to apply pressure and throw some big shots and try to land some heavy blows. And a great fighter will withstand that barrage. They'll avoid getting knocked out. And their superior skill and conditioning ends up with them winning the fight.
If the Ucla/BG *was* a heavyweight fight, it would have been stopped mid-way through. BG was completely punched out. It was dead on its feet. And Ucla just kept landing blow after blow. BG would feebly paw at Ucla, but they did no damage.
Losing the metaphor for a minute...EVERYBODY in cfb wants a killer pass rush from the front four. Ucla wants one. sc wants one. Etc.
And teams prioritize pass rushers as recruits, and pass rushing techniques during practice.
So it's not surprising that BG, after 9 or 10 months of off-season work, was able to put some pressure on dtr early. However, they weren't able to sustain it over 4 quarters/12 rounds.
Ucla may not have the best pass blocking ol in America. But it doesn't have to. It just has to worry about being better at pass blocking than 12 teams are at pass rushing. And Ucla decisively won that battle this week. Ucla completed ~35 passes for over 350 yds... that's a win. On to the next one.
Btw, Ucla didn't use many ol. The five starters got the vast majority of the snaps. Siale Taupaki played some at RT (and looked really good, imo), but that wasn't until the second half. Tyler Manoa got done snaps at RT, too, at the end of the game. And Sam Marrazzo played some at center.
Raiqwon O'Neal had a great first game as a Bruin.
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