Eric Bieniemy play sheet will be studied by D’Anton Lynn at USC

Look at Eric Bieniemy’s play design and structure. D’Anton Lynn has a new homework assignment at USC.

Eric Bieniemy is UCLA’s new offensive coordinator, as UCLA Wire has noted. USC defensive coordinator D’Anton Lynn will need to study Bieniemy when the Trojans meet UCLA late this season. It’s going to be a fun meeting of the minds in Los Angeles and the Big Ten.

Bieniemy wrote about his decision, as reprinted by UCLA Wire and as told to ESPN’s Pete Thamel and Adam Schefter:

“Southern California. I attended high school there. I started my career in the league here [with the Chargers]. It’s obviously great to be back with the Bruins, where I was previously employed.”

Now that Bieniemy is in Los Angeles with the Bruins, what should D’Anton Lynn and USC look for when studying this offense? Let’s go to Bieniemy’s play sheet for a few examples:

Eric Bieniemy versus D’Anton Lynn in UCLA-USC football: let the chess match begin!

Bieniemy versus Lynn is a five-star coordinator clash in Los Angeles.

D’Anton Lynn knows his opponent in this year’s USC-UCLA football game. Eric Bieniemy was hired by UCLA football as its new offensive coordinator.

UCLA Wire wrote:

The UCLA Bruins search for an offensive coordinator is over. Shortly after Eric Bieniemy’s name began to gain steam, a report came out that he was finalizing a two-year deal with UCLA, per Adam Schefter of Pete Thamel of ESPN.

(snip)

Bieniemy is headed to UCLA as associate head coach and offensive coordinator as new head coach DeShaun Foster gets a veteran presence on the sidelines.

This move by DeShaun Foster puts Bieniemy up against new USC defensive coordinator D’Anton Lynn, who was UCLA’s defensive coordinator last season. Let’s take an early look at this matchup.

Former Commanders OC Eric Bieniemy to UCLA as OC/associate head coach

Bieniemy is back in the college game.

For the second consecutive year, Eric Bieniemy has a new job.

After 10 seasons with the Kansas City Chiefs — the final five as offensive coordinator — Bieniemy left to become the offensive coordinator/assistant head coach of the Washington Commanders in 2023.

On Saturday, Bieniemy agreed to become the new offensive coordinator/assistant head coach for the UCLA Bruins and new head coach DeShaun Foster. UCLA’s former coach, Chip Kelly, left this offseason to become Ryan Day’s offensive coordinator at Ohio State.

Bieniemy, a Southern California native, returns to UCLA, where he spent three seasons (2003-05) as the running backs coach.

Bieniemy’s one season in Washington didn’t go well. The Commanders led the NFL in pass attempts and were last in rushing attempts. Washington finished 4-13, and Bieniemy reportedly had issues with multiple players regarding his coaching style. The Commanders had plenty of other problems, but Bieniemy didn’t help.

A two-time Super Bowl champion as Kansas City’s offensive coordinator, Bieniemy has been an OC at the college level before. In 2011, Bieniemy was offensive coordinator at his alma mater, Colorado, a role he held for two seasons before coming to the NFL with the Chiefs in 2013.

Lincoln Riley embraced D’Anton Lynn at USC because he studied the past

Lincoln Riley observed UCLA well before D’Anton Lynn came aboard. That was the root of this hire at USC.

Lincoln Riley was drawn to D’Anton Lynn as a candidate for USC’s defensive coordinator opening for a lot of reasons. Many of those reasons flow from what Riley saw and heard when he talked to Lynn face to face. However, the root of this decision and why Riley made it comes from the 2022 college football season.

Lynn did impress Riley in the job interview process. Any candidate for any job would necessarily have to impress the interviewer in order to get hired. This goes for any line of work, not just football coaching. However, there was something beyond the simple fact that Lynn aced the interview. He already had something in his pocket which increased his chances of working with Riley at USC.

It’s not as complicated as it might seem, either:

Why UCLA hiring DeShaun Foster should excite the Rams

With UCLA hiring DeShaun Foster to be their next head coach, I break down why that’s a good thing for the Rams.

When UCLA announced that school legend and NFL veteran DeShaun Foster would be the next head coach of the Bruins, many considered it a weak hire by the university. Not me, though. Foster is a perfect fit. Football fans have become too consumed by the idea that a good head coach is made by a good coordinator. A good head coach is a listener and a leader. That’s DeShaun Foster.

Now, why should the Rams take any interest in who UCLA’s head coach is? The reason is that the type of players that UCLA develops aligns directly with the late-round draft strategy of the Rams and those are the types of players Foster will recruit and develop.

Foster and his program have a lot of battles to overcome, especially in their ability to recruit. Knowing UCLA, they will recruit outside of the box. Yes, they’ll compete for the best players in California, but they’ll also go after the three-star kids in the Los Angeles area. They go after the Valley kids, the JUCO players, the Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico players. They’ll pluck talent from all over, they’ll grow some and get rid of others. In the end, there’ll be a whole host of Day 3/UDFA talent to take from the Rams’ backyard.

Foster, a player who grew up in Los Angeles, has a deep-rooted connection to a city that has some of the best high school football players in America –  city that all too often has players fall through the cracks. Those players will be Bruins and could potentially become Rams down the road.

Since 2020, UCLA has had four Day 2 players and eight Day 3 players drafted, alongside a variety of UDFAs. That group includes Quentin Lake, who the Rams drafted in the sixth round in 2022, and Jake Bobo, who played in 14 games for the Seattle Seahawks as a rookie in 2023.

DeShaun Foster will give UCLA football new energy, but energy won’t be enough to succeed

Energy is good, but UCLA’s new coach has to find defensive coaching on par with what D’Anton Lynn provided in 2023.

DeShaun Foster being named the new UCLA football head coach was not especially surprising or seismic. The move was expected by many, and yet it certainly doesn’t rate as a huge splash for the Bruins.

Foster, 44, played at UCLA from 1998-2001 and had 1,109 rushing yards and 12 TDs as a senior. He scored 39 TDs over four seasons and finished with 686 carries for 3,049 yards.

He was taken in the second round of the 2002 NFL draft by the Carolina Panthers. He played in 79 games across six NFL seasons. In his NFL career, Foster rushed 927 times for 3,570 yards and also had 142 catches for 1,129 yards.

He got his start coaching college football as a student assistant at UCLA and spent a season at Texas Tech in 2016 as the team’s running backs coach before returning to his alma mater.

Foster impressed the UCLA administration with his ability to lead and command a room. Per sources, school officials believe Foster can resonate in the Los Angeles market and emphasize recruiting and fundraising and NIL deals.

ESPN’s Pete Thamel reported that Foster’s contract is for five years as the Bruins get set to play in the Big Ten.

The word “energy” has been a theme upon Foster’s hire. Energy, though, must be supplemented by coaching acumen and an ability to do more with less. Losing D’Anton Lynn as defensive coordinator will hurt Foster in his ability to elevate the UCLA program.

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UCLA does not hire Clay Helton or Alex Grinch as its new head football coach

Darn.

Clay Helton and Alex Grinch both had coaching experience in the Pac-12. They both knew the Los Angeles recruiting scene and had established local connections. They were both part of coaching staffs which won New Year’s Six bowl games. Clay Helton won the 2017 Rose Bowl at USC. Alex Grinch won the 2019 Rose Bowl at Ohio State and the 2020 Cotton Bowl at Oklahoma under Lincoln Riley. Both Clay Helton and Alex Grinch won conference championships. Helton won the 2017 Pac-12 title at USC, while Grinch won multiple Big 12 titles with Riley at Oklahoma. Both men could have been amazingly great fits for the UCLA football program after Chip Kelly went to Ohio State, but the Bruins instead chose DeShaun Foster, an alumnus and a longtime assistant at the school.

UCLA Wire is covering this story. Let’s talk a little more about it:

Who is DeShaun Foster, the former UCLA running back just hired as the head coach of the Bruins?

DeShaun Foster played seven years in the NFL and is a longtime assistant coach.

After former head coach Chip Kelly left UCLA to become the offensive coordinator at Ohio State, the Bruins have already found his replacement.

The athletic department has hired DeShaun Foster, a former UCLA running back who attended the university between 1998 and 2001. He was selected in the second round of the 2002 NFL Draft and played in the pros until 2008.

Here is more from UCLA athletic director Martin Jarmond:

“While undergoing a comprehensive search for our new head coach, DeShaun resonated from the start and throughout the whole process,” said Jarmond. “We are looking for a coach with integrity, energy and passion; someone who is a great teacher, who develops young men, is a great recruiter and fully embraces the NIL landscape to help our student-athletes. DeShaun checks all of those boxes and then some. He is a leader of men and a true Bruin. I am excited to partner with him as we usher UCLA Football into an exciting new era.”

After playing for the Carolina Panthers and briefly the San Francisco 49ers, Foster eventually found his way into coaching. He began his coaching career as a student assistant at UCLA in 2013 and he then became a graduate assistant the following year. He served as the director of player development and high school relations in 2015.

Foster briefly left UCLA for Texas Tech (where he was the running backs coach in 2016) before he was offered the same position with the Bruins a year later in 2017.

He remained with the program (becoming associate head coach of the team under Kelly last season) until he briefly accepted a position as running backs coach for the Las Vegas Raiders.

Even though the former UCLA star had just left the school for the NFL, we recently mentioned Foster as a potential candidate to replace Kelly. He was able to separate himself from a pool of 11 other candidates, per ESPN’s Pete Thamel.

Foster was the “overwhelming choice of the current players” as the top pick to replace Kelly, according to Thamel.

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UCLA Wire knows what it wants for a new football coach, but life might not cooperate

UCLA fans and bloggers know what they would like to get, but do the Bruins have the leverage to pull it off?

USC fans certainly hope UCLA won’t land a quality football coach. Trojan fans aren’t worried about the matter, either. Everyone is looking at Westwood and wondering what can possibly happen at a school with a bad NIL setup and an administration which clearly doesn’t care that much about football. UCLA might not be a poverty school, and it’s true that the Bruins did invest a lot in D’Anton Lynn as defensive coordinator one year ago, but their paralysis this past November when it was clear Chip Kelly should have been fired is something everyone can see.

Why would a top coach want to coach at UCLA? That should be an impediment toward hiring an elite coach.

Nevertheless, our new friends at UCLA Wire — a website which launched just a few weeks ago and now gets to cover a coaching search — know what they want:

“The UCLA Bruins football program has a hard decision to make. After Chip Kelly left to become the new offensive coordinator at Ohio State, the Bruins are suddenly in need of a coach in the middle of February.

“But, they can do the right thing and make an easy phone call: D’Anton Lynn. The former UCLA DC left for the USC Trojans DC job earlier in the offseason.

“However, a chance to become a head coach would be hard for Lynn to pass up, especially with the Bruins. If so, it is likely that a number of UCLA players would stay instead of entering the transfer portal. The question is, does Martin Jarmond make the call?”

You can wish for the moon and the stars, Bruins, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to get them. Maybe we will all be surprised, but don’t hold your breath in Westwood or anywhere else.

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Q and A with UCLA Wire about Chip Kelly’s exit, new football coaching search, and more

Let’s see what UCLA Wire’s editor thinks about Chip Kelly and the Bruins’ head coaching search.

We have been here at Trojans Wire for several years. I have personally been on the job as Trojans Wire editor since early March of 2020, so I am approaching four years in this position. UCLA Wire is just a few weeks old. Former Trojans Wire staff writer Matt Wadleigh is the first site editor at UCLA Wire.

Matt Wadleigh helped us cover the Clay Helton firing and the coaching search which led to Lincoln Riley in the fall of 2021. He is now covering a coaching search at UCLA in his new role at UCLA Wire.

It was a natural and obvious choice to ask Matt about the Chip Kelly departure for Ohio State, the UCLA head coaching search, and other related topics.