Moore Is Better at UCLA

This was the summer Matt Moore crammed.

Food, as always.

“Protein shakes, my mom cooking me steak after steak, potatoes, everything,” said Moore, the UCLA quarterback who is listed at 6 feet 4 and 185 pounds and weighed in the other day at 186, for all his efforts.

Then there was the playbook.

Moore didn’t have the offense down last spring, and new Coach Karl Dorrell and offensive coordinator Steve Axman laid down an ultimatum.

Learn it. Now.

“They said, ‘If you don’t, then you’re not going to play,’ ” Moore said. “So I said, ‘OK.’ ”

So, he digested the playbook and, unlike the food, it stuck.

“He was way behind, and he caught up awfully quick,” Axman said.

Now the quarterback who has waited to play -- patiently and impatiently -- most of his career doesn’t have to wait any more.

The rangy sophomore with the rocket arm is poised to be the starter for the Bruins’ Sept. 6 opener at Colorado after coming from behind to edge fellow sophomore Drew Olson in their latest -- but probably not their last -- battle for the position.

Before he pulled ahead of Olson, Moore had grown antsy, and had even talked of transferring if he didn’t win the job.

That was something, considering his patient past.

At the quarterback factory at Newhall Hart High, Moore started only one season, waiting two years behind Kyle Matter, now at Stanford.

Matter had waited a year behind Kyle Boller, the standout who went to Cal and was drafted in the first round by the Baltimore Ravens. Even Boller had waited his turn behind David Neill, who started four years at Nevada.

The sum of it is, until now, Moore has waited more than he has played.

“College is different,” he said. “Not that my life didn’t start in high school, but now, if I didn’t have anything here ... “

It wasn’t as if he could play safety for the Bruins while he waited, the way he did his junior year at Hart, learning to understand defenses on the other side of the ball and tying a school record with 10 interceptions.

It wasn’t as if he could back up Olson for the next three years and expect to be drafted, either.

“Matthew forever has been hearing that he has unlimited potential,” said his father, Don Moore. “People tell him, ‘You can be this, you can be that. But you’ve got to play.’ ”

He has what Matter, his former teammate and good friend, calls “just a great arm.”

“He moves well in the pocket and he puts the ball on the money,” Matter said.

He has everything, it seems, but experience.

“He hasn’t had a lot of snaps in his career,” Axman said.

That’s why that knowledge -- of defensive coverages, receivers’ routes, pass progressions -- is so crucial.

“The more he learns, the less he frowns, the more he lets his natural ability take over,” Axman said. “He’s a fine athlete, and he sees things other quarterbacks won’t see. One reason is he’s so tall. But he can also sense things that are about to happen. That’s going to produce at least one big play a game, and we want all the big plays we can get.”

Now that Moore has moved ahead of Olson, the talk about leaving is behind him, even if everyone knows there’s no guarantee this duel won’t continue as long as they’re both Bruins.

“It was kind of stupid for me to act like I did,” Moore said. “People asked me about transferring and I said, ‘Yeah, I think about it.’ I don’t think that would ever happen, because I came to UCLA for a lot of reasons. It’s close to home, it’s the kind of school I’ve wanted to be at for a while. I don’t think I want to go anywhere else but here.”

Now he steps into a pressure-cooker, with Olson ready to sprint onto the field at his first lapse -- and with Oklahoma’s imposing defense waiting in the third game.

“I wouldn’t use the word pressure,” Moore said. “I’ve never, ever felt pressure. Ever. People in high school would say, ‘Oh, because the last three quarterbacks have gotten scholarships, that’s pressure.’ Or, ‘Oh, Hart might lose to Valencia’ -- Valencia’s our rival -- ‘do you feel any pressure?’

“I mean, teams used to blitz us every single play, and it was, ‘Aw, Matt, can you handle all that pressure?’ To tell you the truth, I never thought about it. It just didn’t even matter to me. I just played.”

The one time what the rest of us call pressure might have gotten to him was in last season’s USC game.

Moore had come out of his redshirt season at former coach Bob Toledo’s request after injuries to Cory Paus and Olson. He helped the Bruins to a victory in a start against Stanford, then returned to a backup’s role.

When Toledo ignored the momentum Olson had built in the USC game and sent Moore in at the Trojan five-yard line in the first half, Moore fumbled a snap, USC scored and went on to a 52-21 rout.

“I remember coming off the field and kind of kicking myself, ‘Why am I so nervous? ‘“ Moore said. “I don’t know why I didn’t just go out there and play football.

“I think because it was the Trojans, it had a little effect and, yeah, because we were switching in and out, it was a little random too. I don’t know, that’s just a situation I don’t ever want to be in again.”

The pressure a defense brings, Moore insists, is no problem. Opponents almost constantly blitzed against Hart, and in a game against Wilmington Banning he was battered by four late hits.

“He must have been knocked to the ground 20 times,” his father said. “My friend called him Gumby. He’d hit the ground and bounce back up. He’s not afraid.”

Some might look at Moore’s weight and wonder if he can take it. But he is young for his class -- he turned 19 Aug. 9, making him 16 months younger than Olson -- and has the bone structure of a man who will fill out late like his father, who was in his 20s before he did.

“We’re hoping by his senior year he’ll be 225 or 230,” his father said.

Matt’s inability to tip the scales past 190 isn’t for lack of trying.

“I’ve tried forever,” he said. “I finally just decided, whatever, I’m just going to wait for it to come.”

He is such a gifted athlete he could have done all sorts of things. Both his grandfather and father played minor league baseball -- his father for seven seasons -- but Moore gave up the sport after his junior year in high school.

“Baseball’s just so, like, blah,” he said. “I mean, it’s a great game, but football, I love throwing the ball around and making people just get up and just scream. That’s awesome. That’s fun.

“Besides, I didn’t think I had a career in it,” he said. “That’s another thing my Dad told me. I was always a decent player, but he kind of knows what he was talking about. To consistently play and stay in the minor leagues, you’ve got to be pretty phenomenal.

“In football you don’t have to go through any minor leagues. You play your four years or three years of college, you get your education, voila.”

Voila. Maybe not that easily, but after winning the latest competition with Olson, Moore might be on his way.

*

Staff writer Mike DiGiovanna contributed to this report.