UCLA football stays present-minded after second straight Big Ten win
UCLA quarterback Ethan Garbers had a conversation with head coach DeShaun Foster in the week leading up to Saturday’s 27-20 win over Nebraska:
“I said ‘Hey, if we win the coin toss, we want the ball first,’” Garbers recalled. “And that’s exactly what we did. We wanted to set the tone early, punch them in the mouth and I think we did a great job today.”
The Bruins have won two straight games — both on the road — and appear to be playing their best football of the season. They haven’t found their way into bowl projections just yet, but the team is adamant that it’s currently right where it wants to be.
“We are in a one-week season,” Foster told reporters after the Nebraska game. “Just continue to be one week. We’re not going to focus on (a bowl) outcome.”
Foster said he’s broken this season down into three parts: The first was a gauntlet that included opponents like No. 1 Oregon and No. 6 Penn State, the second is filled with blue-collar teams and the third is a slate of West Coast games.
UCLA has already beaten two blue-collar teams in Rutgers and Nebraska and has Iowa on deck for Friday night. The Bruins’ confidence is ripe for another win and shows that the team might be tough enough for a “nasty” Big Ten Conference after all.
“At the beginning of the year, we didn’t start out how we wanted to,” Garbers told reporters. “A lot of mental errors, a lot of mistakes. But we just kept on pushing, kept on listening to (offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy), kept fighting it through, taking it one play at a time, one game at a time, and, man, it feels good to be victorious.”
Garbers finished the game with 219 passing yards and two touchdowns, which was the third multi-touchdown game of his career. He set the tone early, just as he said he would, and completed nine of ten passes for 83 yards in the first quarter.
The redshirt senior was also the leading rusher with 68 yards gained on the ground. His 57-yard run in the second quarter was a career-long distance and also the furthest run of any UCLA player that day. This comes after Garbers’ 49-yard touchdown run against Rutgers.
“They were in man coverage and just stepped up in the pocket and nobody was there, so I took off,” Garbers said with a smile. “I just had to make one guy miss and off to the races. Kind of disappointed in myself, I think I ran out of gas at the end.”
Garbers’ production is also a credit to the offensive line, which has drastically reduced the number of sacks allowed per game. The Bruins are averaging nearly 100 more yards of total offense per game since introducing the lineup of Nikki Prongos, Spencer Holstege, Sam Yoon, Josh Carlin and Garrett DiGiorgio in the Oct. 5 game against Penn State.
“My line did a great job,” Foster said. “This is our fifth game of having the same guys, so our continuity is coming together and that’s basically what O-line play is. When you trust the man next to you, that’s how things go well.”
Foster’s support for his offensive line and Garbers is mutual.
“He’s our light and he’s our motivation,” Garbers said. “He’s huge on sacrifice. I really think that we started to sacrifice a little bit, and this means a lot to a lot of the seniors. We’re going to finish how we wanted the season to start.”