Craig Has The Scout - UCLA 2026

Coming Up

Who: UCLA Bruins

When: Friday, November 13, 2026, 8:00 PM

Where: Rose Bowl Stadium, Pasadena, CA

How: FOX

Opponent Primer:

Head Coach: Bob Chesney.

The marriage between Bob Chesney and UCLA is one of the great culture clashes in modern college football. Chesney climbed the profession the hard way, going from Salve Regina to Holy Cross to James Madison and now UCLA like someone playing Dynasty Mode and cranking up the difficulty between stops. UCLA spent years searching for a football identity and finally found one fully imported from somewhere else. Chesney has turned UCLA into James Madison with better weather, overpriced food trucks, and an ocean view.

The funny part is watching him try to sell East Coast football-family culture to a fanbase that treats home games as an inconvenience interrupting their time on the beach. Chesney’s on the sideline trying to run a revival meeting in front of 18,000 quiet spectators an hour away from campus, half of whom are checking dinner reservations by the second quarter. UCLA football spent decades looking for somebody who cared this much. Unfortunately, Los Angeles remains unconvinced that caring is necessary.

Chesney has nailed the Hollywood look. He stalks the sidelines with a manicured swagger, part regional insurance salesman, part high-energy youth pastor. His hair is aggressively coiffed and held together by enough product to survive a natural disaster and maintained with the precision of a man who has never encountered an unflattering camera angle. He preaches a wholesome brand of football, a mix of family values, gridiron grit, and reminding everyone relationships matter. Somewhere in Iowa City Kirk Ferentz is watching all this and getting uncomfortable.

The thing is, it has worked. UCLA is in the top five, undefeated, and staring at the Playoff. Chesney has injected energy, organization, and belief into a program that often felt like it was being maintained rather than led. Yet none of it has translated into widespread fan engagement. He's an earnest East Coast football lifer trying to build a family culture in a city that treats authenticity like a branding exercise. Against all odds, he's winning in a town that prides itself on being too cool to care.

Chesney has injected national enthusiasm into the UCLA program. The result is that UCLA has averaged 4,000 fewer fans this season than last. Nothing says national relevance like a stadium that is a third full. At some point, the success Chesney is having will bring suitors from blue-blood programs with real NIL money. There is nothing that represents UCLA more than bringing in a high-energy family values messiah who immediately starts winning football games, and you still can't convince Los Angeles to care enough to drive up to Pasadena past noon.

Offensive Style: Spread-to-run attack with slow tempo and multiple formations

Dean Kennedy started as a University of Rochester quarterback who also played basketball and lacrosse, using college as an extended high school experience as an alpha jock. His first coaching job came at ASA College in Brooklyn, a school that would later cease to exist after losing its accreditation. He was promoted to offensive coordinator at ASA's Miami campus a year later and almost certainly introduced himself as "a college coordinator in Miami" whenever possible.

From there, Kennedy landed at Mississippi State as a graduate assistant under Dan Mullen, followed Mullen to Florida, and spent four years collecting increasingly important job titles while occupying the same desk. He went from graduate assistant to quality control to assistant quarterbacks coach. When your career is tied to Dan Mullen and the same office chair, Kennedy did what any unhinged young coach would do. Kennedy hand-wrote 290 letters to coaches across the country, begging for a foot in the door. Two answered. One was Bob Chesney.

Chesney researched Kennedy, donated to two charities connected to his family, and a year later hired him at Holy Cross as quarterbacks coach. That is either the most wholesome hiring story in college football history or the most successful cold call since the first Nigerian prince discovered email. Kennedy helped produce a 12-1 season and a memorable Hail Mary win over Buffalo, earned the offensive coordinator position, followed Chesney to James Madison, briefly flirted with leaving for the Jaguars, and was informed by Chesney that this was not part of the plan. JMU then went 12-2 and reached the Playoff. Now Kennedy is in Los Angeles calling plays for a B1G contender that went 3-9 a year ago, a development a little too far fetched for Hollywood.

Kennedy runs a spread offense that is basically a bruiser wearing a skinny jeans costume. It’s built on zone reads, gap schemes like power and counter, and RPOs. With Nico Iamaleava healthy, UCLA balanced that physical rushing identity with a quarterback capable of stretching the field at any moment. Since his season-ending injury, the Bruins have become even more committed to grinding opponents into dust. The run game was the foundation at James Madison (55% of plays) and remains the foundation at UCLA (56% of plays). The passing game now largely exists to punish defenses for becoming obsessed with stopping the run. Play action, RPO tags, motions, and eye candy are all designed to create hesitation, and Kennedy is remarkably good at turning a half-second of indecision into an explosive.

Defensive Style: 4-3 with multiple fronts and looks with Match Quarters as a baseline coverage

Colin Hitschler grew up in Philly and wrestled at Penn, the perfect background for a man who now spends Saturdays trying to pin B1G offenses. He spent his childhood watching Eagles defenses fly around and hit people, then got his first NFL job as a Philadelphia Eagles training camp assistant in 2009. A year later he was working in personnel for the Chiefs before taking the traditional coaching career plunge from the NFL to Division III football.

His first significant coaching stop came at Salve Regina under first-time head coach Bob Chesney. From there he took the scenic route through the profession, grinding his way through Widener, Arkansas State, and South Alabama while collecting responsibilities the way some people collect airline miles. At South Alabama he worked alongside Kane Wommack before the staff was shown the door. Hitschler landed at Cincinnati with Luke Fickell and spent years climbing one rung at a time from quality control assistant to senior analyst to safeties coach to co-defensive coordinator. It was the sort of career progression that suggests Fickell wants you to earn your promotion. He followed Fickell to Wisconsin, spent a year there, then resurfaced at Alabama with Kalen DeBoer and Wommack as a co-defensive coordinator. After Alabama's uneven transition under DeBoer, Hitschler found himself looking for the next opportunity. Chesney called, James Madison reached the Playoff, and the two packed for Westwood together. Now Hitschler is coordinating a top-five defense where the weather is perfect, the traffic is not, which is a good place for a guy who has spent his career proving he could make unlikely situations work.

The unit has taken on the nickname "Bruin Bullies," a nod to Philadelphia's Broad Street Bullies and perhaps the most Philadelphia thing in Los Angeles since the Fresh Prince. The defense is physical, deceptive, and intentionally unpleasant. The goal is to make quarterbacks throw into traffic, while forcing running backs into a wall. So far it has worked. UCLA's defense ranks among the nation's best, and it plays with the personality of a Philly wrestler who somehow woke up in Beverly Hills and decided not to change a thing.

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