LOS ANGELES — Kenny Churchwell III gazed at the turf, trying to find the words, his hands working faster than the muscles in his mouth.
Last year, UCLA football's hopes in the Pac-12 were crushed under an unrelenting air raid, Oregon's Bo Nix and USC's Caleb Williams and Arizona's Jayden De Laura all too often firing into windows too wide and secondaries too shaky. Chip Kelly's offensive juggernaut and Dorian Thompson-Robinson's development couldn't save defensive coverages that collapsed.
"We're trying to promote a different standard," junior safety Churchwell asserted at spring practice Tuesday. And then he paused, trying to quantify a platitude his tone indicated was of the utmost importance.
"We're trying to be uncomfortable being comfortable, if you get what I'm saying," he continued.
On a very micro scale, that looks simple. Sprint everywhere, no matter if you're tired. Show up 30 minutes early. Hold extra meetings. But, more broadly, that shift in standards starts under the umbrella of new defensive coordinator D'Anton Lynn, who's been routinely praised by Bruin defenders this spring as he's attempted to integrate new concepts into UCLA's scheme.
Lynn, formerly a safeties coach with the Baltimore Ravens and son of former Chargers coach Anthony Lynn, said Thursday he went "back and forth" on whether he wanted to stay in Baltimore before eventually accepting the Bruins job.
He talked coverages in-depth as part of the interview process, Lynn said, and acquiesced his background in working with defensive secondaries — also a former cornerback at Penn State — likely played a role in the hire.
"That's been an emphasis this spring," Lynn said, "not giving up big plays and just trying to disguise our coverage the best we can."
When asked about defensive changes under Lynn last week, in a textbook Chip-ism, Kelly said his staff had been "conscious not to throw the baby out with the bath water." Translation: not yet introducing radical new defensive ideas, and sticking to similar schemes and terminology UCLA has employed in the past to not befuddle players.
But some of the former Ravens coach's defensive principles are becoming apparent, particularly in his work with a Bruins secondary in need of an adjustment in approach.
Last year, Churchwell and junior defensive back Alex Johnson explained, the Bruins ran quite a bit of pattern "match" coverage — a zone principle that involves tracking the receivers in a defender's area. Lynn, however, has introduced more "spot drops" this spring, backs said, ignoring specific receivers' routes and breaking on the ball once the quarterback winds up to throw.
"This year, we're going to be more of a looser zone, harping on the vision, making sure that everybody's on the same page," Johnson said Tuesday. "And I think that's an area that we've lacked in the past."
Two days after Lynn was hired, he was in Southern California. And the first thing he did, the coordinator said, was review film from last season, dissecting how Pac-12 offenses attacked the Bruins' schemes.
One of his major takeaways: UCLA's red-zone defense lacked. Wasn't just the eye test. The Bruins ranked in the bottom 25 in the NCAA in percentage of red-zone scores surrendered last season, stopping opposing offenses only 11.5% of the time inside the 20-yard line. That's bad.
Modern coverages, the coordinator explained, require a mix of pattern-match, spot-drop and man-to-man. Blending more of one seems like a small change in terminology, but is a notable adjustment in philosophy that speaks to Lynn's vision: Disguise looks to confuse the opposing quarterback as often as possible. It could certainly pay dividends in the red zone, where the field shrinks and decisions become split-second.
"If I do my job for the D-lineman, they're going to get a lot of cover sacks," Churchwell said, referring to plays where coverage is so stout that rushers have time to get to the quarterback. "That will happen. We're going to do better this year."
Amidst increasingly complex offensive systems and wide receiver deployment in college football, Johnson said, you need strong defensive backs, potentially on every snap. So that goes hand-in-hand, he said, with an overhaul in the Bruins' secondary come the fall: bringing in not only Lynn as their new coordinator, but also former Sacramento State safeties coach Kodi Whitfield to coach the cornerbacks.
"Our defensive meetings as a unit, it really feels like it's an NFL room now, an NFL atmosphere, with coach Lynn," Johnson said. "The expertise he brings from the NFL side is great. He's still learning to transition the NFL game to the college game … but I think the jump that we're going to take this year is going to be great."
