Tag: Chip Kelly

D.J. Uiagalelei heading to UCLA? Still possible, but hardly certain

Kent State QB Collin Schlee is heading to UCLA to play for Chip Kelly. D.J. Uiagalelei might still come to Westwood, but he would face a lot of competition for the job.

The UCLA Bruins are active in the transfer portal, especially at the quarterback position as Dorian Thompson-Robinson finishes his UCLA career.

Chip Kelly has been searching far and wide for a new quarterback, and they landed a commitment from Kent State transfer Collin Schlee. According to Zachary Neel of Ducks Wire, Schlee is likely to be the starter — or at least compete for the starting job in LA in 2023.

“I don’t think Collin Schlee is transferring to the UCLA Bruins to serve as a backup,” Neel wrote. “He may have been told he is going to be in a quarterback competition with other passers — potentially a five-star freshman — but given the career Schlee has built and with his standing as one of the top available quarterbacks in the transfer portal, he is not going to Westwood to wait in the wings.”

The junior became the full-time starter for Kent State this past season, throwing for 13 touchdowns and five interceptions and 2,109 yards. Head coach Sean Lewis dashed to the Colorado Buffaloes to become the offensive coordinator on Deion Sanders’ talented staff in Boulder, and Schlee now heads out to the Pac-12.

There could be another twist with Dante Moore decommitting from Oregon and going to UCLA, but as Neel mentions, it would be surprising if Schlee didn’t come to UCLA to be the starter — or at least have a chance to win the job.

This raises an obvious question: Will former Clemson QB D.J. Uiagalelei still transfer to UCLA, as many people expected? It’s certainly still possible, but it’s hardly a lock with all the competition in the quarterback room in Westwood. That is one of the significant quarterback transfer dramas which has not yet been resolved in this offseason cycle.

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Top-5 QB Dante Moore flips commitment from Oregon to UCLA

It’s a huge get for UCLA and head coach Chip Kelly.

We’ve got a West Coast quarterback coup in progress.

Dante Moore, one of the top QBs in the class of 2023, has flipped his commitment from Oregon to Pac-12 rival UCLA.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CmW8gfsPXYl/?igshid=MWI4MTIyMDE%3D

It’s a huge get for UCLA and head coach Chip Kelly. Moore (6-foot-2, 210 pounds) is ranked No. 5 among quarterbacks in his class and No. 11 nationally. One of the most highly-sought recruits in his class, Moore has offers from 40 different schools.

Moore told ESPN that he picked UCLA because it would be best for his development. That might be related to the recent news that Oregon’s current starting QB Bo Nix has decided to return for the Ducks’ 2023 season rather than declare for the NFL draft.

The news dropped Oregon’s 2023 recruiting class to No. 14 nationally, while UCLA climbed to No. 22.

More recruiting news

Ohio State gets top ’24 WR, LSU gets another 4-star DB

The top 20 undecided recruits of 2023

LOOK: 5-star Oregon QB Dante Moore posts pictures of visit to UCLA

After his visit to UCLA this weekend, Oregon’s 5-star QB Dante Moore posted pictures in a Bruins’ jersey on his Instagram.

The reported news that Oregon Ducks fans were nervous about earlier in the week came true over the weekend, with 5-star quarterback Dante Moore taking an official visit to Los Angeles to see Chip Kelly and the UCLA Bruins.

Moore, who committed to the Ducks in July and has repeatedly said that he is locked in with Oregon, is expected to put pen to paper during the early signing period later this month. Moore is rated as the No. 2 overall player in the 2023 class.

Regardless of how solid he seems to be on his commitment to Oregon, Duck fans have still been pretty hesitant of a flip after the departure of offensive coordinator Kenny Dillingham, who was the main recruiter for Moore. This late visit to UCLA raises some eyebrows, but the Ducks are still expected to be in a good place to land Moore in a couple of weeks.

Dan Lanning paid a visit to Moore last week in Detroit, and Will Stein, Oregon’s new offensive coordinator, was able to sit down with the 5-star QB earlier this week to develop a relationship.

While all of that should inspire confidence in Oregon fans, the site of your prized recruit — the highest-rated QB to ever commit to the Ducks — in a UCLA uniform just a couple of weeks ahead of signing day is not easy to see.

Here are the pictures that Moore posted after his visit to UCLA.

Chip Kelly and DTR have been together for 5 years; their last ride vs USC is next

#UCLA has a coach-QB combo with 5 years of experience. The Bruins have built toward this moment. It’s now or never. #USC is just getting started.

There is a ton of pressure on USC this Saturday against UCLA. Lincoln Riley, Alex Grinch, Caleb Williams, and the USC secondary all face an enormous amount of scrutiny. Failure to deliver on a stage this big will generate a lot of criticism if they fall short.

Yet, in many ways, the burden on the UCLA Bruins is greater, for one very simple reason: UCLA isn’t going to get a lot of chances to do something like this.

USC is going to have a better, deeper, more complete team next season with roster reinforcements and additions from the transfer portal, on top of incoming recruits.

UCLA? The Bruins will be in full rebuild mode, because the anchor of their team, Dorian Thompson-Robinson, has been with the program for five years. Chip Kelly’s UCLA tenure is as long as DTR’s. It has taken five years for UCLA’s coach and QB to develop to the point that they could make a run at the school’s first conference championship since 1998. This UCLA roster also includes some grad transfers. This is a very old team in college football terms. Everything has led to this moment on Saturday, and if UCLA can’t win, the Bruins aren’t going to be back here in 2023. When they move to the Big Ten in 2024, they aren’t likely to have much of a chance of competing with Michigan and Ohio State.

This was just one of many topics discussed on the Trojans Wire weekly USC show at The Voice of College Football:

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All the game keys, plot points, and elements of intrigue for USC vs UCLA

At the @VoiceOfCFB with @MarkRogersTV, we joined #UCLA expert @TonyBruin of @LastWordOnCFB to fully break down Trojans-Bruins.

This is it. We’re two days away from USC versus UCLA. You want a massive pregame show. We have a massive pregame show, nearly 90 minutes of discussion on USC-UCLA and its many different storylines and items of interest.

Tony Siracusa joined Trojans Wire for a full-length discussion of USC-UCLA. Tony Siracusa is a UCLA expert and also an editor and writer for Last Word on College Football. He joined Trojans Wire and show host Mark Rogers at The Voice of College Football for this big game breakdown, with analysis of this Saturday’s game plus the history of the USC-UCLA series, a look at why UCLA is keeping tarps over nearly 12,000 seats at the Rose Bowl, and a lot more.

Find the video below, followed by a brief presentation of the many topics discussed in this program.

Subscribe to, like, and share Mark Rogers’ USC channel at The Voice of College Football:

Once again, the Pac-12 crushes its College Football Playoff hopes in November

The #Pac12 had 3 #CFBPlayoff contenders on Nov. 12. It has only one on Nov. 13. You can set your watch to it: November ruins the Pac.

This was the kind of Saturday the Pac-12 had been avoiding this year.

We hadn’t seen the crazy upsets which upend the Pac-12’s College Football Playoff hopes. We hadn’t seen the chaos which usually leaves the Pac-12 on the outside looking in. We hadn’t seen the face-plants, stumbles, and slip-ups which ruin this conference’s postseason picture.

Just wait until November. It eventually happens.

To be sure, we were all stunned that Washington went into Autzen Stadium and beat Oregon, and we were shocked that UCLA couldn’t score even as many as 30 points against Arizona, an unfathomably bad showing by the Bruins. Merely 35 points against an atrocious Wildcat defense would have been enough.

Yet, as shocking as Saturday was within the 2022 season itself, it certainly wasn’t shocking in a larger historical context. This is what happens to the Pac-12 on a regular basis.

It has also happened to Chip Kelly in particular. Let’s review:

Chip Kelly, UCLA can’t solve the road-game puzzle in the Pac-12

.@Donald_Smalley of @Ducks_Wire captured Chip Kelly’s reaction to an Autzen Stadium homecoming which didn’t go as planned for UCLA. We have extra details as well.

Chip Kelly went home to Autzen Stadium, his work office for several glorious seasons at the University of Oregon. As our friends at Ducks Wire know well, Kelly retains — and will always have — a deep fondness for Eugene and the UO community. His career took off there. He established a lot of good relationships there.

He won big there.

He coached in a national championship game and multiple Rose Bowls as the leader of the Oregon program.

Kelly has certainly lifted UCLA to a higher level this year, recalling past glories, but one thing he couldn’t do was win on the road in a big Pac-12 game.

Don Smalley of Ducks Wire captured Kelly’s reactions on Saturday’s UCLA loss to Oregon in the quotes below:

5 takeaways from No. 9 Oregon’s dismantling of No. 10 UCLA

Bo Nix keeps raising his ceiling, and Kenny Dillingham is scheming his way into coaching consideration. Our major takeaways from Oregon’s big win over UCLA.

It seemed like a pretty picture-perfect day to be an Oregon Duck, didn’t it?

The day started with ESPN’s College GameDay over on the quad out front of the Knight Library on campus, and it ended with a dismantling of the No. 10 UCLA Bruins. Mixed in there was a live duck flying out of Lee Corso’s hands as he donned the Oregon mascot head, followed by an explosion of offense that resembled the Chip Kelly days at Oregon while a light rain fell inside Autzen Stadium.

The cherry on top of it all? Chip Kelly was standing on the visiting sideline, still searching for his first win in Eugene since leaving years ago.

The Ducks were dominant on Saturday, putting up 45 points on UCLA’s vaunted defense, and keeping the Bruins at bay from the early second quarter to the final whistle. The final score will read 45-30, but that doesn’t quite paint the whole picture for the Ducks. This was a statement win that felt more lopsided than the scoreboard would suggest, and it might have been enough to make waves in the College Football Playoff conversation.

The Ducks should be feeling pretty good about themselves right now. We feel pretty good about them here at Ducks Wire. Here are our five biggest takeaways from that victory:

5 notable quotes from UCLA coach Chip Kelly after the 45-30 loss to Oregon

Always a man of few words, UCLA head coach Chip Kelly was complimentary of the Ducks after the 45-30 loss to Oregon.

When Chip Kelly was the coach at Oregon, his quotes weren’t exactly 50-page diatribes.

Nothing has changed with the current UCLA coach as he was short, sweet and to the point with his postgame comments after the Ducks handed his team its first defeat of the season.

In the end, there wasn’t a whole to say for Kelly as his team will go back to Los Angeles and lick their wounds after the 45-30 loss. No doubt, the Bruins will put this game in the rearview quickly and focus on their game next week with Stanford.

But before he left town, Kelly quickly met with the media and discussed topics from the game to the overall atmosphere of Autzen Stadium.

Photo Gallery: College GameDay plus a win equals a special day for Duck fans in Eugene

Photo Gallery: It was a long day for the Oregon Ducks fans, but it was worth it with the 45-30 win over Chip Kelly and the Bruins.

Many Duck fans are going to sleep very well Saturday night.

A lot of them showed up at 4 a.m. for ESPN College GameDay and left Autzen Stadium 12 hours later with an Oregon 45-30 victory over UCLA.

It was a banner day in numerous ways with Lee Corso’s reunion with the Duck to Sabrina Ionescu being back on campus to be the guest picker. Former coach Chip Kelly was also in town, but he was on the opposite sideline as the coach of the Bruins.

Obviously, the highlight of the entire day was Oregon managing to get its biggest win of the Dan Lanning Era to date with the win over No. 10 UCLA. With the victory, the Ducks are 6-1 overall and 4-0 in conference play. They’ve also asserted themselves as the favorite to win the Pac-12.

Here are the photos that illustrate the long, but successful day in Eugene.