University of California, Los Angeles, Athletics
Utah 52, UCLA 45
Pasadena, Calif. (Rose Bowl)
October 22, 2016
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UCLA head coach Jim Mora
opening remarks
โItโs tough to win a game when you start with a kickoff return for a touchdown, you give up 360 yards rushing and only get 46, you have five turnovers, you kick the ball out of bounds right when youโre trying to get field position. Those are some really discouraging things. But Iโll give you a positive; I thought our young men, getting 14-0, coming off two losses, fought. Thereโs no quit in them. Weโre not doing well enough, but itโs not for lack of effort on the part of our players. Thatโs not a winning formula, as Iโve said - giving up that many yards rushing, not being able to run, turning it over that much. The key thing for those young men is that they hang together, support each other, continue to search for answers and come out and work hard. Absorb the disappointment, but not let it affect them going forward. Thatโs what weโll continue to talk about. Sometimes there are tough life lessons to be learned in athletic competition. Hopefully we can learn those lessons, and theyโll apply them somewhere down the road in their life, but right now itโs very, very painful for all of us.โ
on going back to spread and if it will be their base offense going forward
โWe havenโt been able to run the ball, which is no secret. I felt like we go up-tempo, try to open some things up for our backs, try to help our offensive line a little bit, see what we do going forward.โ
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on identifying the situation with the o-line to get the run game going
โWe didnโt really try to run the ball today. We only attempted 10 runs.โ
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on the run defense
โItโs been so good lately. We got on the wrong side of some blocks, and that young man had a world-class day against us, and thatโs disappointing because we have been playing the run so well. We were searching for answers on the field between series and between plays, trying to get ourselves on the right call. Sometimes you get out of rhythm. Our guys were playing so well on defense and today we werenโt able to sustain the success weโve been having. Itโs something we have to look hard at.โ
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on Mike Fafaul
โI think Mike is gritty as heck. He threw the ball 70 times today. He threw [five] touchdowns. Heโs unaffected by his mistakes. Heโs affected by them, but he keeps going out there and slinging it. His teammates have tremendous, tremendous, tremendous respect for him, and they want to play hard for him. Heโs a warrior. Heโs a stud of a kid. I have great respect for him.โ
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on if heโs ever been part of a game in which the team didnโt try to run the ball
โIโve coached hundreds of hundreds of games. I came into the league with Don Coryell. Thereโs your answer. Your objective is to win. Whatever it takes to win. Thatโs what you have to be willing to do. We didnโt go into the game thinking weโd throw it 70 and run it 10, but we were moving the ball through the air, and our offensive line was doing an excellent job with protection. That defensive line came into the game as the No. 1 sack unit in the Pac-12 with 20. We called 76 passes, and they had 2 sacks. Thatโs a credit to our offensive line. We had five sacks on defense, but we couldnโt stop the run.โ
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on what was the biggest problem on the opening kickoff
โThe kick. The kick needs to go deep left, the kick didnโt go deep left. They ran a bounce, we were closing down the right side, and they found a crease. It starts with placement of the kick. Simple.โ
Utah head coach Kyle Whittingham
opening remarks
โNot our typical way of winning a football game. We donโt find ourselves in many shootouts. It was great to see our offense respond the way they did, defense struggled a little today against the throw game, but their run game was almost non-existent. It was almost like playing Washington State with almost 70 pass attempts which I think is what we had against us today. Defense had just enough in the tank to get that last stop that we needed. They did come away with some takeaways that we needed. We had four or five takeaways, four picks and a fumble, so five takeaways which was huge. Started fast, got jump started with that kickoff return. It was nice to see us get one of those right out of the gate and break loose with a kickoff return. Great job by Cory [Butler-Bird] and the kickoff unit blocking it up. Storyline of the game is the offense and how they kept moving the ball and kept answering every time UCLA scored we answered. Just a great performance by Joe Williams. He was on a pitch count. He wasnโt going to go above 30 carries, and we held him to 29 and he got over 300 yards. I canโt say enough about that young man and what he has meant to our team the last two weeks. What a blessing it is for us to have him back and how unselfish it was of him to come back. It was legitimate when he stepped away, he was really hurting. He did it for his teammates, he is an unselfish guy. We are elated to have him back.โ
on mentality change for Joe Williams
โWell he did have a month off to kind of heal up and get some of the soreness out of his body. Heโs just rejuvenated. I donโt really have a great answer for you other than he is not feeling perfect but he is still got some things that ail him. He has about 53 carries the last two weeks and thatโs a huge workload for him.โ
on big plays
โItโs awesome. Weโve had some pretty good running backs come through here and play against some inferior teams and have not been able to rack up the yardage like he did here today. To say that he broke the all-time record is really saying something. Weโve had some running backs go to the NFL that have done some really great things. So to run that well against a really good defensive team โ and they are a good defensive team, theyโve put up some good defensive numbers. Itโs a credit to the offensive line, itโs not just Joe. The offensive line worked their tail off this afternoon. We had just enough throw game to keep them honest. Last couple of years weโve been a little bit too one-dimensional and werenโt able to open up the running lanes because we did not throw the ball efficiently enough. Now we are throwing the ball with much more efficiency.โ
on offensive mismatches
โNo, I donโt think so. There were no individual matchups, I just think our offensive line played well today. They have some really big kids up front. It was just our offensive line was able to work as a unit and that was great to see. Thatโs how we envision those guys would be able to be coming into the season that they would be one of the better offensive lines in the Pac-12.โ
on UCLAโs offense gameplan
โThere wasnโt much run game. I donโt know how many times they ran the football. Pure runs you can probably count on one hand, maybe two. But our defensive line responded to their run game. Pass rush wasnโt as good as it usually is, and the coverage wasnโt nearly as good as it usually is, but we had enough.โ
on turnovers
โThe turnovers made a huge difference. If we donโt get those we donโt win the game. Other than the final score, and Iโve said it over and over, the turnover margin is the most important stat and we were like plus-two or three which really helped our cause.โ