Chip Kelly believes this is one of the deepest teams he has seen at UCLA

Chip Kelly believes he has a deep squad at UCLA ahead of the 2023 season.

Things are looking better than ever for Kelly in Los Angeles, as he explained that this Bruins team is brimming with talent at every position while evaluating how his team looked over the last couple of months.

“There’s been at every position,” Kelly responded, when asked about players that have made a name for themselves ahead of the grind of the summer. “I think that’s the good thing about it, that we really have a lot of depth. This is, will be one of our deepest teams in terms of who can play, and how many players we can play. We’ll be at 85 scholarships when we get to the fall, so we feel really good about where we are, feel really good about our depth as we continue to develop it.

“We still have a couple new faces that will show up when we get here in June, but by large what we have right now is our team. There’s one or two guys that we’re waiting on to get here.”

Continuing, one of the many goals that UCLA seemed to achieve this spring was integrating all their newcomers. The Bruins have 16 commits coming in from the high school ranks and 13 via the transfer portal over the offseason.

In addition, they have a new defensive coordinator coming aboard in D’Anton Lynn after two years with the Baltimore Ravens. That means the big focal point of the spring was acquainting them with each other, and Kelly said that process began in January. Kelly sounds happy with where things stood.

“Really, it was just to introduce all the new guys,” Kelly added. “And I think they’ve really acclimated really, really well here. It started in January with the offseason program that [director of football performance Keith Belton] runs, and they kind of hit the ground running from that standpoint. So it was kind of a seamless transition as we transition from the running and lifting program into actual on-field football stuff. It’s been really good. 

“We’ve been really healthy throughout the entire spring with one to go here, knock on wood that we’ll get through this one. But we’ve got a lot of work done, and it’s been really good, obviously, bringing D’Anton in. Instituted some new things defensively and just how he does things, I think our defensive players picked up really well on that. Then, plugging in the new faces on the offensive side of the ball, it’s been good. We’ve been really pleased with everything that’s gone on in the last 14 training sessions.”

Alas, it could be a tremendous season for UCLA, and maybe their best under Chip Kelly in 2023, as everything seems to be trending in the right direction.