40-14. Sounds like an impressive UCLA road win over Oregon St., something that has not come very often during the Dorrell era. In reality, it was a comically bad display of execution by both teams, with the Bruins finally able to take advantage of the Beavers’ total ineptitude on offense and special teams.

With all of the upsets in college football this weekend, any win is a good win, no matter how ugly it is. And make no mistake about it, this was one of the ugliest, at least until about midway through the fourth quarter when Oregon St. completely imploded and the Bruins ran off 28 points in seven minutes.

How ugly was it? Kahlil Bell fumbled on the Bruins’ first two offensive plays, the second getting returned for a touchdown. UCLA had eight penalties, including six offensive penalties in the second half. On one fantastic sequence in the third quarter, the Bruins were facing third and one on the Oregon St. seven-yard line, poised for the go-ahead touchdown. UCLA committed two false start penalties in a row, then Ben Olson forced a ball into double coverage that got intercepted. Bruin football, feel the excitement.

Fortunately, Oregon St. was measurably worse. The Beavers came into the game worst in the nation in committing turnovers, and they gave away five more, mostly on unforced mistakes like the fumbles on consecutive kickoff returns in the fourth quarter that allowed the Bruins to break the game open. They had a touchdown called back on a facemask penalty. Their All-American kicker missed a field goal. They had a punt blocked. It was so unbelievably awful, it felt scripted out of a movie.

On the positive side, the UCLA defense brought its ‘A’ game. With the Bruin offense unable to even get a first down until midway through the second quarter, Oregon St. was able to jump out to a 14-0 lead. It looked like the Utah game was happening all over again. Thankfully for Bruin fans, the Beavers offense sought to prove it could be even more inept. Unlike every other opponent this season, the Beavers didn’t try to spread the field, which allowed UCLA’s front seven to dictate the flow of the game. While Beaver running back Yvenson Bernard found some success on the ground for 125 yards, the Bruin defense held him in check after the first three drives, daring quarterback Sean Canfield to beat them. And he couldn’t. Every pass he threw was an adventure, equally likely to end up in the arms of a Bruin defender as a Beaver receiver, and there was no attempt to throw the ball down the field. Trey Brown had two picks, but there were several other near interceptions. Oregon St. only managed 107 yards total offense after the first quarter, giving the Bruins the time to chip away at the lead with the offense (and it would need a lot of time). It was clearly the most dominant performance of the season for a unit that was highly regarded before the season, but had been grossly underachieving.

From an offensive perspective, the brief fourth quarter explosion should not overshadow the fact that the Bruin offense was really bad for most of the game. Oregon St. came into the game second in the country in rushing defense, so it was not surprising that the UCLA running game wasn’t terribly effective (50 carries for 133 yards), though it gained more yards than the Beavers had allowed in their first four games combined. By sticking with Bell (despite his fumbles) and Chris Markey, the Bruin line wore down the Beaver line in the fourth quarter.

However, the passing game was out of sync again, with nearly half of Ben Olson’s yards coming on two touchdown plays to Brandon Breazell: a 69-yard slip screen and then a great 30-yard deep post. The Bruins found some success with screen passes to the running backs to capitalize on the Beavers’ aggressiveness, which had been missing from the repertoire this year. But there were no completions, besides the one touchdown, beyond about seven yards down the field. Jay Norvell tried without success to incorporate more deep sideline patterns to utilize Olson’s arm, but seemed to abandon any intermediate routes. Still, Olson played decently, quieting the pro-Patrick Cowan crowd (like me) for the time being. He appeared a little more comfortable in the pocket than his past two starts, and showed he can make some throws when given time. Furthermore, he didn’t make as many poor throws as previous starts, other than the bad interception (sadly that’s the standard these days). The problem is that with the shaky play of the offensive line and the predictability of the offense, he’s been unnecessarily under fire a lot of times throughout the season. For example, the vanilla playcalling on first down on Saturday (23 runs versus 8 passes, conservative much?) put the Bruins in a lot of second and long situations, leading to obvious passing situations where Oregon St. could apply some pressure. The bottom line is that it seemed questionable whether UCLA could even score more than 14 points to complete the comeback, and that speaks volumes about how far the offense needs to go, both in schemes and execution.

The biggest difference in the game was the disparity in special teams. I touted the strength of UCLA’s special teams last week, and it was clear how impactful a good special teams unit can be, particularly contrasted against a unit as woeful as that of Oregon St. Besides the aforementioned mistakes of the Beavers (the two fumbled kickoff returns, missed field goal, and blocked punt cost them 24 points in total), Alexis Serna was also terrible on punts (no surprise there, he’s last in the nation in punting), averaging less than 29 yards per kick – though to be fair, Serna is only punting because the starting punter quit the team – helping the Bruins win the field position battle. Meanwhile, Aaron Perez pinned the Beavers inside the 20 twice, while Kai Forbath connected on two more field goals. Matthew Slater again was a force, recovering a fumble and making at least three tackles just on kickoffs. In a game where both offenses are struggling, better field position can be the deciding factor, and it was pivotal in Saturday’s contest.

So now what? The Bruins are 4-1 and 3-0 in the Pac-10. Yet it still feels like they aren’t playing good football, and fans are just waiting for other shoe to drop, also known as the annual Karl Dorrell post-October swoon. UCLA did enough things right to beat a lower-tier Oregon St. team, but improvement better be coming quick with four top-20 teams still on the schedule. Since winless Notre Dame comes to town this week, we probably won’t get a feel for how average good this team really is until October 20 when mighty #3 Cal (?!?) visits the Rose Bowl. Good enough isn’t going to cut it for much longer. The question is whether the Bruins have it in them to put together some complete performances, or if we’re going to have to put up with continued mediocrity with flashes of brilliance. Gee, can you tell how optimistic I am? [bangs head against wall] Oh right, we’re still in first place. Still in first, still in first…

AP Photos by Ryan Gardner