In Reply to: For What it's Worth: UCLA coach, some players praise Chip posted by PittsburghBuckeye on July 26, 2024 at 13:05:38
Kelly sucked at recruiting, and definitely lost his drive to be the leader of the program, but he did a lot of good things that we absolutely need to keep doing if we want to succeed.
1. Tackling. The end of the Mora years had bad tackling as a primary characteristic. That immediately improved and stayed at a high level for years. We absolutely cannot backslide here.
2. Conditioning. For decades, UCLA football was plagued by injuries like the dreaded "high ankle sprain". This got loads better under Kelly, and a continued focus on Health and Conditioning will be extremely important with all of our multiple time zone road trips, and some 9am PST games anticipated.
3. The Running Game. The lack of a running game for Neuheisel's stint, as well as most of Mora's stint (outside of Franklin) was huge. Being able to pound the rock and average over 200yds/game is something we need to keep doing. Fortunately, Foster was part of that era where he could go into a night game AT Alabama and pound them for over 100 yds (293 yds rushing for Foster in his 2 games against them).