Bruins Open for Business

Soon after Karl Dorrell was hired as UCLA’s football coach and informed players he’d be bringing the Denver Broncos’ West Coast offense with him, visions of Ed McCaffrey and Rod Smith began dancing through the heads of Bruin receivers.

“Those guys each caught 100 passes a couple of years ago,” UCLA receiver Ryan Smith said, referring to the pair of Broncos who combined for 2,919 yards and 201 receptions in 2000, the first of Dorrell’s three seasons as Denver’s wide receivers coach. “That’s exciting.”

But will it play in Westwood? The first clues will come Saturday when UCLA debuts its offense in its season opener at Colorado.

The Bruins weren’t exactly a three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust offense last season under former coach Bob Toledo, so it’s not as if UCLA has undergone a dramatic transformation this season.

But while Toledo had an affinity for play-action and the long pass, the Dorrell-led Bruins will attempt to control the ball through the passing game, using quicker drops with quarterback Matt Moore, shorter passes and sending three, four and sometimes five receivers out on the same play.

“It’s a great ball-control offense that keeps the chains moving,” said Steve Axman, UCLA offensive coordinator. “It’s known as a passing offense, but it’s not like you chuck the ball all over the field and hit for a couple of touchdowns. It gives the dimension of running the football within the passing game.”

The Bruins won’t abandon the run. Tailback Tyler Ebell, who rushed for 994 yards in 234 carries and scored 10 touchdowns last season, fullback Manuel White and backup tailback Maurice Drew will not be reduced to decoys in Dorrell’s offense.

But Ebell probably will catch a lot more passes than the 12 he had last season, and Marcedes Lewis, who often lined up as an H-back or tight end last season, will split wide more often, giving the athletic 6-foot-6, 245-pound sophomore more of “an opportunity to showcase my ability ... There’s a lot of excitement with this offense. Anybody can be open on any play.”

Said receiver Craig Bragg, who led the Bruins with 55 receptions for 889 yards and eight touchdowns in 2002: “We’ll have a lot more options this year than in past years. There will be more short passes.

“Last year it was more play-action, go deep. This year, it’s more short, efficient passes with a sprinkling of a few deep balls. It makes it easier for the quarterbacks to make reads and keeps the defense honest.”

Moore struggled with the offense during spring practice, but that had as much to do with his failure to study the playbook as it did with his conceptual grasp of the offense.

But Moore, who so dedicated himself to the playbook this summer that he was able to win the starting quarterback job in camp, and backup Drew Olson still must adapt to the multiple reads that are required of a quarterback in the West Coast attack.

“[Studying the offense so intently] really just helped me go through my reads -- one’s not there, two’s not there, throw it to three,” Moore said. “And Coach Ax is huge on that. That could be his No. 1 thing. Don’t force a ball, throw it to the back ... just go through your reads.”

The West Coast offense can be complex and confusing, especially for inexperienced players, and Dorrell and Axman were careful not to overwhelm their young offense by throwing too much of the new scheme at it too soon. From last spring to this week, they’ve incorporated the offense piece by piece.

“Are we doing everything the Raiders and Broncos are doing? No,” Axman said. “That’s too voluminous, and these are still college kids. It’s not like the pros, who can study it all day long. We’ve stuck to the core of the offense. Have we given them too much? That’s the question now.

“This offense is extremely young -- we could open the season with only one or two senior starters -- and we’re going with a very technical offense, there’s a lot to learn. We have to execute it well enough to go beat Colorado and Illinois.”

Dorrell said the Bruins have installed only “a fraction” of the West Coast offense, but he hopes to install more of it in subsequent years.

“We’re not totally West Coast, but we have about as much in as we want to have in for this season,” Dorrell said. “A lot of these guys like Axman have some things from their past that are incorporated, so the offense is more of a melting pot of a lot of different things....

“People think we’re going to do short passes all the time, but we’ll have ways of getting the ball down the field. Everyone has their own twists to it, and ours will be a little different. I just hope it’s productive. I hope we can move the ball and score.”

Times staff writer Robyn Norwood contributed to this report.