THE STARTING BELL

Bruins ring in Fall Practice with Bullish Kahlil Bell atop the stocked Tailback position

UCLA Football 2008 is underway, and even though Karl Dorrell is gone, three primary figures from the tough 2007 campaign are being counted on to keep the Bruins from a repeat performance.

Fully-recuperated Kahlil Bell starts the Fall as the #1 Running Back on the team, not-so-fully recuperated Ben Olson begins practice as the #1 Quarterback, and Marcus Everett is the #1 Receiver.

The players won’t don PADS for a few more practices, so it is very hard to pass judgment on anything that was observable on Tuesday…  I watched the entire first session, but it was like watching a flag football game.  One of the “other” relevant blogs talks about certain guys looking great, and rising above the rest.  I don’t mean to contradict him, or the Coaches who told him their impressions, but it needs to be stressed that all “impressive performances” from Tuesday should be taken with a grain or two of salt.  There’s a big difference between what you can do in shorts and a t-shirt with no threat of being leveled, and what happens when you’ve got an unrestrained Reggie Carter bearing down on you.

I could tell you about some gaping holes that the Offensive Line opened up – seriously – but I don’t want you to put too much stock in these comments.  Let’s just say that for this stage of the game, the Linemen SEEM to have a decent grasp on their assignments.

Perhaps the excitement of the new, incoming regime motivated the players to study their playbooks harder — but the expected chaos in the trenches was not evident.

I hesitate to say anything negative about anyone either, because ONE practice session is so meaningless — especially the first one.  But if you promise not to over-react, I’ll share:  Ben Olson did not look like he has made the Drew Olson leap just quite yet.  As Brian Dohn reported, Olson is still favoring his injured foot.  That MIGHT or might not be the reason why Norm Chow was concentrating on teaching Olson proper footwork.  Chow seemed to have all the QB’s focusing on proper footwork and body orientation coming away from the Center — Maybe that’s Lesson One in Chow’s Quarterbacking 101 course — but it looked like Olson needed (and got, and absorbed) lots of instruction.

As for the passing, the general accuracy of the QB’s was not good, but that’s due more to timing issues than talent deficiencies.  That said, it is still painful to see Olson hit the trailing (wrong) shoulder of slanting Receivers.  According to Dohn, second-string QB Kevin Craft was horribly inaccurate all day.  I saw more of Olson and Freshman Kevin Prince, who both, also, missed a lot more than they hit.

Again, it must be stressed that this info should not be over-valued — Not only will the QB-Receiver timing improve greatly with practice reps, but the Bruins will probably be throwing mostly quick passes, and the QB’s on Tuesday had a more-decent handle on their short game.  One of the Freshmen QB’s has a funky delivery, but no more comments on that until there is a little more photographic evidence to illustrate it.

As usual in early practices, the Defense looked great, hardly ever allowing Receivers to get separation.  The D was focused, and probably more emotional than the Offense, just like last year.  In fact, despite the regime change, the whole practice seemed eerily similar to a Dorrell practice.  That’s NOT an insult of Neuheisel — Just an observation that it’s not like Dorrell was running some sort of three-ring clown circus — The demeanor and overall “feeling” of his practices were the same as at Tuesday’s session.

And that includes the fans — The attendance was very minimal, and quiet, like they were watching through soundproof glass.  With all the extra tickets that Neuheisel has sold, and with the extra publicity the practice schedule received, and with a big Tennis Tournament in progress on campus, you would think that there would have been more butts in the Spaulding Field bleachers.  But no, there were almost as many family members of players as there were die-hards.  Maybe when they strap on the shoulder pads and there is really something to see, more spectators will come.  They will certainly show up for the big scrimmage.

And when they do, they will see some awesome physical specimens — whether or not the Cheerleaders are in attendance.  As you can see in the 19 captioned photos below, most of these guys look like they are in mid-season “form.”