Inside a triumphant UCLA locker room, minutes after the Bruins’ 54-3 dismantling of Maryland two Saturdays ago, Bob Chesney climbed atop a raised platform and called for his players to gather around him.
In-house footage captured Chesney enthusiastically praising players on both sides of the ball for delivering UCLA’s most complete performance so far this season.
Could a Nico Iamaleava-led air attack that produced zero touchdown passes in UCLA’s first two games provide more support for the Bruins’ vaunted running game? And could UCLA’s defense bounce back after surrendering 38 points and 425 passing yards against Purdue in a week 3 shootout victory?
Shouted Chesney proudly, “I think we know the answer! I think we know the answer!”
Indeed, only 10 months after Chesney accepted the challenge of rebuilding the perennially underachieving UCLA football program, the Bruins have already climbed from dysfunctional to respectable. Chesney overhauled the UCLA roster on the fly this past offseason, welcoming 40-plus transfers, including 11 who followed him from James Madison. Those newcomers have fueled a 4-0 start during which the Bruins have outscored opponents by a total of 179-75.
Now comes a bigger challenge, a matchup with more at stake than any UCLA football game in at least four years and perhaps longer. On Saturday, the 21st-ranked Bruins will visit No. 13 Oregon with a chance to solidify themselves as College Football Playoff contenders and to capture the imagination of the pro sports-dominated Los Angeles market.
Upset the Ducks, and UCLA would be 5-0 with maybe its toughest regular-season game in the rearview mirror. The Bruins caught a break when their 2026 Big Ten schedule included neither Ohio State nor Indiana. A home game against crosstown rival USC is UCLA’s only other remaining matchup against an AP Top 25 opponent. The only road games left on the Bruins’ schedule after this weekend are at Minnesota and Michigan.
Lose to Oregon, and UCLA would squander its best chance to generate real buzz in Southern California and beyond. The Bruins would be a 4-1 team without a marquee win or a chance to obtain one for weeks. That would still be an encouraging start to Chesney’s rebuild, but it’s not a resume likely to move the needle with the CFP Selection Committee. Nor would it be enough to siphon away attention from the superstar-laden Dodgers, Lakers and Rams.
Bob Chesney, along with with quarterback Nico Iamaleava (right), has UCLA off to a 4-0 start for the first time since 2022.
(MediaNews Group/Pasadena Star-News via Getty Images via Getty Images)
The last time UCLA displayed this much early-season promise, Chip Kelly’s second-to-last Bruins team started the 2022 campaign with six straight victories, including wins over nationally ranked Utah and Washington. The undefeated Bruins swaggered into Autzen Stadium with visions of toppling No. 10 Oregon and nudging their way into the national title picture.
A one-sided loss to the Ducks triggered a late-season UCLA slide and accelerated the end of Kelly’s disappointing tenure in Westwood. The Bruins dropped four of their final seven games, including a loss in the Sun Bowl against unranked Pittsburgh. They haven’t been relevant in their conference or nationally since then.
Optimism surrounding UCLA football at that time was dampened by four previous seasons of frustration and mediocrity under Kelly. By then, Kelly had already demonstrated disinterest in schmoozing with potential donors or aggressively pursuing coveted recruits. As one source with knowledge of the situation told Yahoo Sports last year, Kelly “believed he could take a three-star recruit and mold him into a five-star. So why face the challenge of dealing with a five-star?”
There are no apparent warning signs with Chesney yet. If anything, many weary UCLA fans have forced themselves to temper their excitement because they carry the baggage of past disappointments and they don’t want to again have hope snatched away.
The 49-year-old Chesney is a proven program builder who has won big at every stop as a head coach, from Division III Salve Regina, to Division II Assumption College, to Holy Cross, to James Madison. Chesney guided Holy Cross to five consecutive Patriot League titles and to the program’s first-ever FCS playoff win in 2021. He then went 21-6 in two seasons at James Madison, capturing the 2025 Sun Belt crown and leading the Dukes to an unlikely CFP appearance.
When interviewing candidates for the UCLA job last year, search committee member Bob Myers recognized that Chesney was likely to receive numerous multimillion-dollar job offers after his success at James Madison and asked him what made him want to coach the Bruins. UCLA’s decades-long track record of academic and athletic excellence in other sports appealed to Chesney, the JMU coach told Myers, as did the untapped potential of the football program.
“I believe in the power of UCLA,” Chesney said during his introductory news conference last December, adding that there was “zero doubt in my mind that we can win here.”
That same day, Myers told reporters, “I believe Bob wanted this job. Specifically, this job at UCLA. Not a job in the Big Ten. Not a job paying a lot of money. This job.”
Bob Chesney’s biggest challenge may be getting fans in seats to fill the Rose Bowl to a respectable level.
(Luke Hales via Getty Images)
At UCLA, Chesney appears to have the institutional alignment that some of his predecessors lacked. He has a new chancellor with a track record of recognizing what a winning football program can do for a university, a new athletic director who for decades was the president of business operations for the Lakers and a success-starved pool of donors who are eager to support him financially.
The program that Chesney inherited was weeks removed from a nine-loss season during which attendance at the Rose Bowl dropped to record lows. Chesney changed perception remarkably quickly, first persuading Iamaleava to stick around as the team’s starting quarterback and then building around him via the transfer portal.
Dozens of incoming transfers upgraded UCLA’s talent and experience levels. A coaching staff that included numerous holdovers from Chesney’s staff at James Madison helped him install a winning culture. Chesney exuded quiet confidence before the season even as the Big Ten preseason poll pegged the Bruins to finish 13th in an 18-team league.
When asked at Big Ten media day how he’d define success in year one, Chesney wisely chose not to box himself in. He promised only to “attack every single day with urgency and relentlessness.”
“To me,” he said, “success looks like a united, disciplined group that continues to grow every moment they have.”
So far, so good.
UCLA is 4-0 for just the 10th time in the past half century. Chesney is the first UCLA coach to start his tenure 4-0 since Red Sanders in 1949.
To improve to 5-0, Chesney will have to defeat an Oregon team that entered the season ranked No. 2 in the AP poll. The Ducks (3-1) survived a scare against Boise State in their opener, then suffered a head-scratching loss to Oklahoma State a week later, but they appeared to right the ship with an impressive win at USC last Saturday.
While Oregon starting quarterback Dante Moore is still recovering from the concussion that he suffered against USC and has been ruled out for the UCLA game, his replacement, former Nebraska quarterback Dylan Raiola, is very capable. Raiola came off the bench to throw for 289 yards and two touchdowns against the Trojans to lead Oregon to a narrow win.
A disruptive, physical defensive front represents Oregon’s biggest strength. Wayne Knight and the rest of the UCLA running attack is averaging 281.5 yards per game and 7.0 yards per carry through four games, but the Ducks’ front seven will pose the toughest challenge the Bruins have faced so far.
Oregon coach Dan Lanning gave UCLA a massive compliment last week when he compared the undefeated Bruins to last year’s national champions.
“We’re about to play a UCLA team that reminds me a lot of Indiana from last year,” Lanning told reporters during his weekly media availability.
In other words, don’t count on the Ducks overlooking the Bruins and getting complacent.
To notch the program’s biggest win in recent memory, UCLA will have to earn it.