A year after UCLA notched its first winning record under coach Chip Kelly, no one will break out any eight-claps over another 8-4 season.
“It’s cool to win eight games, it’s cool to go to a bowl game,” redshirt senior offensive lineman Jon Gaines II said last week at Pac-12 media day. “But we were nowhere near where we wanted to be and where we want to be this season.”
So what are the Bruins goals?
“Win every game we play,” Gaines said.
That would be something for a program that has gone unbeaten only once — during its 1954 national championship season — and has not won 10 games since 2014. Showing its usual skepticism of the UCLA brand, the media picked the Bruins to finish fourth in the Pac-12 even with the return of high-jumping quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson and star running back Zach Charbonnet.
At least nine victories will be needed to continue the upward trajectory UCLA has forged under Kelly, its sustained improvement perhaps the biggest reason he was given a new four-year contract despite an 18-25 record in his first four seasons.
The Bruins might just get there given their easiest schedule in at least three decades, the probability of an elite offense and some hope for a long-awaited breakthrough on defense.
Here are five questions facing the Bruins as they prepare to open training camp Friday:
How long will Charbonnet’s Heisman Trophy campaign last?
Barring injury, probably at least until October.
Thanks to Michigan backing out of an agreement to play UCLA this fall, the Bruins will open the season with Bowling Green, Alabama State and South Alabama. (Please, stifle your laughter.) It will be the first time UCLA has not faced a Power Five conference team or Notre Dame in nonconference play since 1992, when Cal State Fullerton, Brigham Young and San Diego State graced its schedule.
Playing middling teams from smaller conferences means yards can be gobbled like one of the Bruins’ lavish buffet spreads. In his first season as a Bruin, Charbonnet led the Pac-12 with seven 100-yard rushing games on the way to a total 1,137 yards.
Here’s guessing the senior could be nearly halfway to matching that total by the time UCLA opens its Pac-12 schedule with Colorado and Washington — two more…