Fabian Moreau’s struggles don’t worry UCLA defensive coordinator

Through two games, cornerback Fabian Moreau doesn’t look like a first-round NFL draft pick, like Coach Jim Mora predicted him to be in training camp. He’s been fine, but there is an argument to be made that he isn’t even the best cover man in the Bruins’ secondary right now.

The junior was beat several times on inside slant routes and a jump ball against Memphis. He also got beat on a fade route against Virginia in the first game of the season. On Wednesday, though, defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich said that he wasn’t worried about having to build up Moreau’s confidence for the rest of the season.

“There are guys who are like that, where you have to coddle them and bring them back,” Ulbrich said. “He’s such a tough-minded kid…he’s just very resilient. I don’t see him shook right now. He’s got that confidence of a great corner. Great corners are going to give up catches, they’re going to give up big plays every once in a while. Do you want that to happen? No. But it happens. He’ll bounce back.”

Moreau, who was recruited as a running back, switched to cornerback during his freshman year at UCLA.

“As we all know, he’s a guy who is fairly new to the position, but has crazy upside,” Ulbrich said. “Because of the way he works, he’ll maximize it, for sure.”

Ulbrich seems less worried about Moreau than Mora, who talked about the cornerback in his conference call on Sunday.

“I’m not going to back off of what I feel about Fabian because I think he can be an outstanding corner,” Mora said. “But what we need Fabian to do is to step up and be that outstanding corner.”

Mora added: “When you play as much man as we’ve been playing lately … you’re going to give up some catches. You just are. It’s inevitable. You can’t go out there the whole game in single coverage and not think you’re going to give up some catches. That being said, I think it’s time for Fabian to come up with some plays. I think he’ll accept that challenge, and we’ve talked about it.”

For more Bruin observations, follow Everett Cook on Twitter @everettcook