After a brutal 33-7 loss at the hands of the Cal Bears on Saturday night at the Rose Bowl, many fans expected to wake up on Monday to the news that the UCLA Bruins had moved on from Chip Kelly.
According to a new report from Bruin Report Online, that does not seem to be the case. An excerpt from Tracy Pierson’s article reads:
It was widely believed the embattled coach was under scrutiny by the UCLA administration and would possibly be let go. It was especially so after the loss to Arizona State Nov. 11th, but the victory over rival USC a week later helped to buoy Kelly at UCLA, even after a devasting loss to Cal to end the regular season on Saturday.
Right before the game against the USC Trojans, one of UCLA’s top donors, Casey Wasserman, came to the aid of Chip Kelly calling the idea of his firing “ridiculous.”
After beating USC, handily, that seemed to be enough (even with an embarrassing loss at home against Cal) for AD Martin Jarmond and the powers that be to retain Kelly as UCLA makes the move to the BIG10.
Chip Kelly’s UCLA Bruins Tenure
As it stands, UCLA has a record of 7-5 on the year, and Chip Kelly’s record after six years with the program is an even 34-34. He’s only reached 9 wins once in a season (2022) and has yet to win a Bowl Game, something that he will now have the opportunity to accomplish in a few weeks.
Among many things (recruiting, donor support, game attendance), one of the largest issues with the program under Chip Kelly’s tenure has been inconsistency and losing inexcusable games. You can look back to last season when the loss at home to Arizona crushed the potential of being a 1-loss team going into the highly anticipated Victory Bell matchup. And then this season, an embarrassing loss, again at home, to a 2-win Arizona State team that didn’t even have a quarterback.
With players such as Keegan Jones, and Kam Brown already entering the transfer portal, and a large number of players entering the NFL Draft, Chip Kelly and the UCLA Football Program have a lot of work in front of them if they want to be competitive in the BIG10 next season.