It’s pass or fail for this system

UCLA quarterback Ben Olson was trying to describe the nearly indescribable, an offensive system so intricate that critics suggest it’s almost impossible to run at the college level:

The Bruins’ version of the West Coast offense.

“I probably don’t know how to describe it,” Olson said. “It’s just a very complex offense, something you have to understand everything you have to do. The multiplicity of it has so many different things you can do, and there are so many different formations. And you have to make a decision rapidly.

“You have to worry about your guys first. You have to be confident with what they’re doing. Then you got to worry about the guys in front of you [on defense] and what they’re doing. It’s something that to be good at you have to understand every little step, one principle built upon each other.”

OK, but in the time it took for Olson to paint that picture, a delay of game penalty would have been called.

“It’s like taking a calculus class,” Olson said.

And, if you’re a quarterback, coming up with all the right answers in a matter of seconds.

Making things -- and points -- add up on the field is the trick.

Pinning down exactly what constitutes the “West Coast offense” is difficult, mainly because the term is used to describe many variations of a passing attack.

A pure West Coast offense involves the quarterback checking off on as many as five receivers running pass routes. And, no matter what the label, executing such a sophisticated offense is especially difficult on the college level because personnel, particularly quarterbacks, change every two to three seasons.

The inconsistency UCLA experienced offensively its first two games is why many college coaches incorporate portions of the West Coast philosophy but refrain from banking their team’s future entirely on such a complicated system.

“That offense is very difficult from a college standpoint, extremely difficult,” said Steve Clarkson, a quarterback coach who has privately tutored players such as Matt Leinart and Olson. “It can take three years to learn it and the problem is most quarterbacks are out of the program before that. It is something you have to really believe in to pull off, and you have to recruit kids who have the ability to pick that stuff up in a very short period of time.”

And that, says Jay Norvell, UCLA’s first-year offensive coordinator, is just the easy part.

“I think players can learn anything you can teach,” said Norvell, who brought the forward pass to Nebraska as the Cornhuskers’ offensive coordinator the last three seasons. “One thing is, UCLA is familiar with a lot of these [passing] schemes in their history. When we went to Nebraska, we were trying to install a pass-styled system in a program that had run the option for over 40 years. That’s a major adjustment.”

The “West Coast offense” name was first attached to what Don Coryell implemented when he was coach of the San Diego Chargers in the 1970s. But it is most closely identified with former Stanford and San Francisco 49ers coach Bill Walsh.

“Some people use two backs and three wideouts, others have four wideouts,” said Portland State offensive coordinator Darrel “Mouse” Davis, father of another pass-happy style, the run-and-shoot. “I think the offensive juggernaut that has taken over college football has every variation. It has gotten to the point where you see a team like Appalachian State beating Michigan using five guys running around like little-bitty water bugs.”

But the more difficult the offense, the more difficult it is to execute it.

“You have to tell each receiver what they’re doing and to sit there in college, where you don’t have pictures on the sideline after a play, it becomes very hard to make it all fit,” Baltimore Ravens’ offensive coordinator Rick Neuheisel said.

On top of that, the communication needs Windtalkers-like-skills to master the code. Neuheisel’s example was, “Dot-right-shift-to-double-left, Z-motion-2-jet-right” -- though that only sets the formation and blocking.

Said Neuheisel: “Then you start getting into the words of a pattern. It could be ‘Z-drive, F-shoot pump.’ In college, you don’t get to say it to a quarterback in his ear. You either have to signal it in with somebody on the sideline, or you have to send it in with a player. And he’s got to spit it all out.”

Still, Norvell is a believer, saying, “The beauty of the system is its flexibility.”

For UCLA, it has flexed between very good to below average this season.

The Bruins piled up 624 total yards in a 45-17 rout of a bad Stanford team in the opener as Olson threw for 286 yards and five touchdowns.

The follow-up was a woeful performance in a 27-17 victory over a solid Brigham Young team, a game where the Bruins appeared to shy away from extravagant play calling.

Olson, who did not throw deep after the first quarter, completed 13 of 28 passes for 126 yards -- stats limited by dropped passes, the Cougars’ veteran defense and his erratic throws.

Olson said, “I have to be better” afterward, but whether he can produce consistently may be out of his throwing hand.

Neuheisel, who was a college head coach at Washington and Colorado, doesn’t believe any high-end West Coast offense can work on the college level.

“The West Coast offense doesn’t feature a guy,” Neuheisel said. “Basically, the premise is you’re going to get five [players] out as much as you can, and the defense is going to tell you who you’re going to throw to. There’s an answer, regardless.

“In college, you’ve got feature players and you want to feature them. You don’t necessarily want to spread the ball.”

Neuheisel also pointed out, “People in college don’t trust their protection with only five guys blocking. . . . You’re putting a lot of pressure on the line that in college is almost always inexperienced. There aren’t many offensive line coaches in college that are going to sit there and tell you, ‘I can block those guys with these five.’ ”

But in the end, it comes back to the guy taking the snap and how adept he is at learning a sophisticated offense.

“What makes it so powerful too, is there are so many different things you can do with it,” Olson said. “You just got to get comfortable with it by talking about it.

“When I watch the NFL Network I hear things that are familiar to me, that aren’t going to be brand new if I have an opportunity to go to an NFL training camp.”

Olson said that it took two months of meetings with Norvell, and hours of practice after that, to get that comfortable with the offense. The learning process continues. Davis, who worked with record-setting quarterback Colt Brennan as the offensive coordinator the last two seasons at Hawaii, says it takes at least a year for a quarterback to become consistently dangerous to opponents.

“Colt was really pretty average his first year, but by the time he got to his second year he was lighting it up,” Davis said. “Now, after this season, he’s gone. That’s the problem. You teach a guy for three years, then you have to start all over.”

Times staff writer Sam Farmer contributed to this report.

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chris.foster@latimes.com