‘If they stay healthy, they should win the Pac-12’
Now that UCLA is 2-0 on the season, the bandwagon has many new members. The Bruins took down LSU 38-27 Saturday, Fox Sports analyst Brock Huard likes what he saw and he also made a bold prediction. If UCLA stays healthy, it wins the Pac-12, per Huard.
He joined The Herd with Colin Cowherd Monday afternoon to explain.
“If they stay healthy Colin, they should win the Pac-12,” Huard said. “I mean I don’t know if I’m overreaching, they’re just two weeks in, maybe that’s a little overreaction, but if they stay healthy….What jumped out to me the most and frankly what I told him in our meeting and I said, Chip, I don’t think I’ve seen a college team that had zero guys injured, zero. I mean, we watched them practice there were over 100 guys on that field there was nobody in the weight room, nobody on the exercise bike. When I saw them a couple years ago against Oklahoma where Jalen Hurts just destroyed them, they had all sorts of guys banged up. Their numbers were low and he said well yeah I mean, we’re over 80 scholarships for the first time, got over 100 kids. We spent extra time during the COVID period, extending our offseason.
“They were the last to finish spring ball because he wanted to develop them. Again, this is the best (offensive line) in the Pac-12. This is maybe the best running back combination in the Pac-12 Yeah, there’s no question in my mind this is the best tight end package in maybe all of college football. Martinez and Dulcich are phenomenal. DTR is gonna make some mistakes, but he didn’t make very many of them Saturday night and if he limits those, with the 25 guys they play on defense, they’re going to be a very, very hard out.”
UCLA has two weeks to prepare for Fresno State coming to town but after the game Saturday, Kelly at least lavished in the moment of beating a big time opponent and talked up the squad. He did say they were special after all the other week after beating Hawaii.
“As I just said I think our players are understanding if you embrace the process then the process will embrace you back,” Kelly said after the game. “But the great thing about football is that no one cares about tomorrow. Our next opponent does not care. You know, Fresno has a really good football team, but next week is an improvement week for it’s not a bye week it’s not an open date, you know, we’re not going to Cabo, you don’t take off five days off and then showing back up again ready for Fresno is. We’ll be back at it on Monday, we have a really good plan on how we work on our improvement weeks.
“And the great part about this group is that’s what they want. If you ask them what do you guys want to do, they don’t want a day off, they want to work, and that’s the fun part for us so we’ll be back at it on Monday. We’ll have a couple of days off sprinkled in there, but we got a lot of work to do. And we understand that but to have this feeling on a Saturday. There may be some people surprised out there, there wasn’t anybody surprised in our locker room. Because of the preparation that they put in this week.”
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UCLA (2-0) faces Fresno State (1-1) at home Sept. 18 at 10:45 p.m. ET/7:45 p.m. PT in its next contest.
