UCLA Defends Porous Defense

Two years ago, after Oregon State torched the UCLA defense for 34 points and 491 yards, UCLA Coach Bob Toledo publicly torched his defensive coordinator, Nick Aliotti.

Monday, two days after Oregon State torched the UCLA defense for 44 points and 604 yards, Toledo took the high ground. The Bruins have given up more points than any team in the Pacific-10 Conference, and they are on pace to give up more points in an 11-game season than any team in school history, but Toledo endorsed defensive coordinator Bob Field.

“He’s running the defense I want to be run,” Toledo said Monday. “He’s coaching hard. It’s obvious we have some deficiencies.”

The Bruins have scored 38 points in each of their past three games, losing two. But the UCLA players insist they cannot and will not allow the season to deteriorate into a repeat of the one two years ago, when several players followed Toledo’s lead and publicly blamed the defense for the persistent necessity to win by overpowering offense alone.

“This team has a different character,” quarterback Cory Paus said. “I don’t think we’re going to allow that to happen. I’m the leader of the offense, and I’m not going to let that happen.”

Said offensive lineman Brian Polak: “The offense was just clicking on all cylinders pretty much constantly in ‘98, whereas this year we haven’t really played to our true potential as an offense.

“We have no right to be pointing fingers at the defense and saying, you’re doing a terrible job. We should be pointing at ourselves.”

The Bruin offense certainly should not escape its share of blame for Saturday’s fourth-quarter debacle, in which Oregon State outscored UCLA, 23-0, in an 11-minute span. At a time when one score--one long drive, even--might have clinched a Bruin victory, the UCLA offense had the ball four times without so much as a first down. The Bruins ran 10 plays, with Paus throwing seven passes, all incomplete, and three rushing plays resulting in a three-yard gain, a one-yard loss and a lost fumble.

But, when a team slips out of major bowl contention after consecutive games in which the offense scores 38 points, the defense must come under the greatest scrutiny. Field called Saturday’s performance “very disappointing,” particularly so in that the Beavers converted 12 of 18 third downs, including eight of 12 when Oregon State needed at least six yards for the first down.

“We couldn’t get them off the field,” Toledo said. “When you’re giving up tremendous amounts of yardage, you’re either giving up a lot of big plays or you’re just not playing very consistently,” Field said. “It’s been a combination of that.”

On 23 of their 90 plays--basically, one out of every four--the Beavers gained at least 10 yards. Field insisted the Beavers were not taking advantage of a passive defense and said the Bruins ran various blitz schemes about 25 times, leaving defensive backs to provide man-to-man coverage.

“It’s not sitting back and playing a bend-but-don’t-break philosophy,” Field said. “I don’t think you can win football games doing that. I think you have to attack.”

Yet no Pac-10 team has fewer sacks than the Bruins. The coaches attribute that primarily to an injury siege along the defensive line. The Bruins have used seven starters along the defensive line, and at one end position injuries have struck the first-stringer (Kenyon Coleman), second-stringer (Sean Phillips) and third-stringer (Mat Ball).

With all three starting linebackers playing through injuries and three backup linebackers missing games because of injuries, Field said he could not switch the UCLA defense from a 4-3 to a 3-4. Either way, Toledo said, the weakness among the front seven allows opponents to take advantage of a secondary he called the “Achilles’ heel” of the defense.

“They’re like sharks after blood,” he said. “The secondary is struggling right now, and we’re having a hard time pass rushing with injuries and depth.”

Defensive backs Ricky Manning and Jason Zdenek are the only defensive starters who have played all seven games without injury.

“We’re not the same team that beat Alabama and Michigan,” Toledo said. “We’re beat up and banged up.”

With injuries forcing lineup changes every week, Field said the defensive coaches might simplify the defensive schemes.

Aliotti eventually found work as defensive coordinator at Oregon. The Ducks have allowed the fewest points in the Pac-10.

Without using his name, however, Toledo on Monday cited instances of a UCLA defense under Aliotti that sometimes had players lined up in the wrong places, even lined up with 10 men on the field.

“There are things that get me to point fingers. We’re not doing those things this year,” Toledo said.

In 1998, when Cade McNown and the Bruins scored at least 28 points each game, “There was reason for the offensive guys to be upset,” Toledo said. “The defensive guys didn’t play very well all year. If our offense was doing that, it would be very frustrating. But our offense is not a well-oiled machine either. There’s no need to point fingers. There’s enough mistakes to go around.”

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Defensive Struggles

UCLA has had three different defensive coordinators in the last three years. A look at how the defenses have fared in those years:

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Category 2000 1999 1998 Points allowed 30.7 30.9 28.3 Rushing yards 157.3 189.7 180.3 Passing yards 228.6 254.9 257.5 Total yards 385.9 444.6 437.8

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