Watching Chip Kelly’s workouts are a window into the things that made him such a transformed college football coach: a breathless rhythm, demanding attention to detail, some unnerving oddity, blunt intensity, joy in the craft.
“This is our happy place,” Kelly said afterwards in University of California Practice area, an oasis of artificial turf tucked away on the Westwood campus between the legendary Pauley Pavilion, a hotel and a parking garage. Kelly smiles and fidgets, occasionally putting his hands in his armpits as he speaks, ready to answer questions but ultimately much more interested in preparing for the biggest game of his tenure at UCLA on Saturday against Oregon. He is not a man who tends to stand still.
This was reflected in Monday’s practice – or training, as Kelly prefers to call it, in keeping with military jargon. Between 9 and 10:26 a.m., there were probably two minutes in which the Bruins could relax and exhale. Kelly used those two minutes to embrace his former 2019 team gambler, Wade Less, who was visiting from Australia with his wife and daughter. “We need to tighten security here,” Kelly cracked in Les’ salute, a flash of ironic humor to the New England coach.
Then she went back to work. One of the predecessors of fast tempo, the offense of no-crowding, applied this concept to practice as a whole – crawling as many reps and reps as possible into the designated workout window, digging players to think quickly and execute when they’re tired, never allowing enough recuperation to distract minds. “If you keep moving, you don’t need much time,” Kelly says. “We are working with (shorter) interest periods, the TikTok generation. I have added myself.”
The irony here is that the Coach Hurry-up job at UCLA was an exercise in methodical patience. To the surprise of many after Kelly was the most amazing of the year in late 2017, his change of program unfolded at Iowa’s offensive pace. It took a long time to get off the ground, with losing three consecutive seasons and scoring 10-21. More than a few people speculated that, with the rest of the sport acclimatising to the pace of attack that Kelly helped deliver in Oregon from 2007 to 2012, he had no plan B to succeed in the modern world.
Even year four was suspicious in November – the Bruins were 5-4 before blast victories over Colorado, USC and California might have saved Kelly’s job. Some thought keeping him was a mistake, even with an 8-4 record.
But that breakthrough was followed by major off-season decisions by key players, none more important than quarterback Dorian Thompson Robinson. His choice to return for a fifth year rather than enter the NFL Draft was part of an enduring commitment from many UCLA veterans. Along with a few major additions via the transfer portal, Kelly finally had a team capable of administrative trust checks in him.
The score so far is a record 6-0 and ninth nationally, and has been the highest-ranked UCLA in polls since September 2015. The Pac-12 post was all about Utah favorites and training/quarterback reshapes at USC and Oregon. But it was the Bruins who quietly became the last undefeated steadfast in the conference.
In a sport where loyalties are fleeting — on all sides of the equation, administrators, coaches and players — UCLA is here in a throwback. Everyone hung together. Now we’ll find out how far a smart, veteran group can go together.
Thompson Robinson wore two rubber bracelets in practice on Monday, both of which he said were a gift from his chess mentor, Seth Makovsky, and were shaped like chess. Someone said “a player is not a piece”. The other said: “Protect the king.” Thomson Robinson said the King “could be anything. This week, for sure, it’s going to be the ball.”
This King was captured multiple times by Thomson Robinson during his college career. He threw 26 interceptions and lost 11 fuss, with 2019 being a particularly prone season for turnover – 19 in total, 12 of which are picks and seven fumbles. At the season opener that year, Thompson-Robinson threw two interceptions and had two empty fumbles, key ingredients in a shock loss at Cincinnati.
This was UCLA’s second season under Kelly, and the Bruins’ second loss in a row to the Bearcats. Questions about both the coach and the selected full-back began piling up. But then Kelly stood firm in his support of Thomson Robinson. “I love training Dorian,” he said that night.
The two have been on alert ever since. It wasn’t always easy – there was some mutual discontent, some side turmoil – but the growth is deep. Their careers intertwined for five seasons.
“Whether it’s in my tail, in front of me, I’m just trying to make this thing as complete as possible,” says Thompson Robinson. “We don’t leave anything on the table. We have evolved in terms of communication and communication only. We will sometimes chase each other on the sidelines. But that’s something I love about Coach Kelly, I can go on about anything and don’t feel judged.”
Kelly appreciates Thompson Robinson’s intelligence, but what he loves most is his competitive spirit in the middle. He’s listed at 6’1″ and 205 pounds, with a slightly built upper body, but he brings the quarterback mentality to the field.
“He’s strong as hell,” Kelly says. “One of the most underrated qualities in the middle is solidity. He will stand there and take a hit, not run away from anything – he can be very safe.”
Kelly pointed to a play in the Bruins’ victory over Washington earlier this month, in which a Thompson-Robinson pass was overturned on the scrimmage line and intercepted by a defensive Husky. Thompson Robinson lunged and delivered a hit that tripped the line operator, and UCLA retained possession.
“We just went to second, and I went, ‘Stop! ‘ Kelly says. “There is a lot of respect for that.”
For his part, Thompson Robinson was somewhat offended by the idea of being just a midfield or safe. “I think I can play any position on the court,” he says. “I am the kind of guy who likes to compete. If it involves a ball and involves winning and losing, then I am there.”
As UCLA’s win totals increased last year and this year, Thompson-Robinson’s errors decreased. His interceptions have fallen from 3.3% of his total passes in 2019 to 2.9% in ’20, 2.1% in ’21 and 1.2% this year. While he still has an affinity for splash play, he’s also more willing to play safe.
This is the type of mature coaches who like to show up in players as they progress through their college life. Fortunately for the University of California, Los Angeles, in this fleeting age, Thompson-Robinson chose to continue performing those plays in his blue uniform.
“Dorian has done a really good job of finding the edge – his right edge,” says quarterback coach Ryan Gunderson. “Having great focus but being yourself and being aggressive, knowing when to do it a Play until it’s time to make it The game. Chip and Durian are on the same page. These two types of food feed on each other.
“With the really talented kids who are in their fourth and fifth year, this is where you go. At centre-back, that is where they should be headed.”
At this point, Thompson-Robinson should be considered a legitimate Heisman Cup contender. In addition to leading an unbeaten upset, he is fifth nationally in passing efficiency, seventh in total attacking yards per game (8.49) and has captured 19 touchdowns in six games. The only complication may be that his teammate, succeeding Zach Charbonnet, may take the votes away from him as the national top ten (123 yards per game).
Thompson-Robinson has plenty of company in the UCLA locker room when it comes to the ongoing maturation of veterans. The depth chart is full of graduate students and other players who have been around and played football a lot. This isn’t a BYU list full of adults who’ve gone on Mormon missions, but it’s not far off.
A look at UCLA’s starting lineup according to this week’s depth chart reflects that. A novice played an average of 37.2 college games. When the Bruins take the field at Autzen on Saturday, it will be the 50th game for both receiver Jake Bobo, offensive lineman Atonio Mafi and defensive back Stephan Blaylock.
“We’re older than dirt,” says receiver Jake Bobo, laughing.
Maffei and Blaylock have all done their best at UCLA. Bobo is a transition from Duke that instantly added some juice to the scrolling game. He averages 16 yards per reception and has had four touchdowns in the past two games.
“I had one year left, and I wanted to make a decision based on football,” Bobo says. “I wanted to win games, something I haven’t done much in the past four years. I felt like UCLA had the best chance of doing something on the national stage — I did research on guys who come back, guys who come with me.
“We had goals coming in the year. A lot of the players in this building knew the goals could be achieved. But I think some of the people outside the building don’t necessarily know. It was great to show people what we’ve known since April.”
Kelly takes pride in his old smart roster, and says this team is all about two things: books and a ball. There isn’t a lot of time wasted worrying about key players getting into youth problems, because few of the key players are teenagers.
Instead, Kelly put together a men’s team like defensive lineman Jacob Sykes, a transfer from Harvard University. “He was a pioneer in applied mathematics at Harvard,” Kelly says. “His mother said she was a bit frustrated, she wanted him to be an engineer. He said applied mathematics is the new engineering, so he lost me after that.”
Kelly is a smart guy himself, but at his core he is a football coach. He is talented at plotting against the safe splitting and not the splitting of atoms. A reporter asked him if he was involved in academic conversations with his players, and the answer was a trademark Kelly snipe. “Yes, the Pythagorean theorem,” Kelly replies. “We discuss that a lot in our meetings.”
Chip Kelly made his representation as the smartest guy in the room in Oregon over a decade ago, setting a record 46-7 there and entering the Ducks in the 2010 BCS Championship game. He then moved to the NFL and was never able to replicate that success. His return to the college game was a much slower build than he had imagined.
But he is close now, about to return to the top. A game in Oregon on Saturday offers a perfect opportunity to re-establish his trademark genius in training. Just don’t expect him to admit it. What others think doesn’t easily penetrate the walls of the training field at the University of California, Los Angeles, Kelly’s boarding campus.
“I don’t understand this mentality, why people might want to go online and read what’s being said about you,” he says. “I learned a long time ago that praise and blame are the same thing. We don’t play for approval. We do what we do, you have to be around good kids like this, it’s fun.”
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