WATCH: Chip Kelly on COVID-19 Concerns, UCLA Football's Potential Coaching Moves

UCLA football coach Chip Kelly talked to reporters about how the Bruins are handling COVID-19 a week out from the Holiday Bowl, the impact of spending Christmas together as a team and some impending staff changes he expects to make official. 

CHIP KELLY

Think about leaving campus earlier to get into your bubble in San Diego earlier?

We have not talked about that. Obviously, our players, we talk to them all the time about protecting our ecosystem. We are masked whenever we are in the building. Our meetings, we have a few of our meetings – see the chairs set up and the TVs – if you have a bigger group, we meet outside. We’ve taken all the precautions that we took a year ago when we were faced with this challenge so we’re continuing just to go through that, but there were no discussions about trying to go anywhere. Right now, it’s been about two weeks, I think, where there are no students on campus, really, there’s just the athletes, we talked to our players about what they do when they’re not around here, because that’s a really important factor for this, and then understand the ramifications. If for some reason, you did test positive, you would be out for 10 days and we’re inside of 10 days, you won’t be able to play in the game. So I think everybody’s got to be really heightened and we’ve talked about it all season long. And I think what this does to us – just look at what happened to Cal, they went down to Arizona and lost when they had only 44 scholarships, they had 41 kids out – so we highlighted those things. We’ve obviously highlighted the basketball, there’s been a lot in basketball. I think in recent weeks and it just seems it’s starting to ramp up. I think the NHL is canceled right now. So we’ve used all of those examples and our players, we’ve been around this group for a while with this and they’ve done an unbelievable job but there’s also some variants that it sounds like it’s really highly transmissible so we’ve got our fingers crossed.

Discussions about bowl game status?

There’s always ongoing discussion. Our medical team is awesome and they lead the charge with everything so my take is that we’ve always let the team make the decision in terms of where we are and they’ve got a really good grasp of it so any decisions that we make will be medical decisions.

What about specifically discussing with bowl game officials?

Maybe they have, I don’t have a daily conversation with the bowl game people. But I know, I would imagine that Martin and Josh and Erin, and that group, that’s the liaisons to those people, have those conversations.

Talk to team about booster shots?

We talk about that stuff all the time, so Ant, our trainer who’s our liaison to all of our players when it comes to all that medical stuff, has emphasized all of that stuff to our players. Again, we’ve been really good, and again, I think we’re at 98% vaccinated so I’m sure the next wave is – I think we learned today from the university that you’re going to have to have the booster shot to be able to be back in the second term so those are all things we discuss with our players all the time. This isn’t just something like, hey, let’s talk about it now. Those guys can probably quote me verbatim on protecting the ecosystem so it’s something that we’ve talked about for a long time now.

Any players who won't be available for the bowl game?

I couldn’t say anything right now, no.

Christmas together after Thanksgiving together?

Well, I think it’s – everybody has Thanksgiving together in college football just because that’s been the nature of the schedule for a long time but the fact that you have an opportunity to be together on Christmas is the fact that you had a good year. So I think they would take it as a reward. Obviously, the cool part about being in a bowl game is their families can be there with them so we’re anticipating most of the families of our players being down there, being able to celebrate Christmas with them, the fact that we have so many kids in Southern California to begin with, the fact that we got to play in the Holiday bowl is a really cool thing. So we’re anticipating everybody be together but it’s kind of the norm in college athletics to be spending the holidays together so I think our players understand it and embrace it because it means you had a good season.  

Hiring Molloe?

Yeah, I think he's an outstanding coach. We've obviously played against the Washington coached teams, and then the people that I have a ton of respect for in this profession that had called and recommended him, from guys that worked with him on a daily basis. You look at the players he's produced or helped produced while he was at Washington, we've run into him and know him from recruiting, obviously in our footprint on the West Coast, he does a tremendous job from that standpoint. And then as you just get to know him, he's just a quality person, that's the one thing that just stood out about Ikaika to me, is just what the type of person he is and I think he'll fit in great with our staff and he'll fit in great with our players. He shares the same values and visions that this university and everybody here has about recruiting student-athletes and getting into a place where they can be here for four years and become better because of it and the experiences that they have here, and then the education that they get here. So I think he'll fit in perfect with our staff and we're excited to have him be part of it, so he'll hit the ground running for us here immediately, especially from a recruiting standpoint.

What position will he coach?

He's gonna coach the outside linebackers.

These practices differ from the earlier bowl prep ones?

They don't, this is really a rinse and repeat from last week. So really, every time we've been to a bowl game, we really get two weeks added, so this is our second Monday. We may have tweaked a script or two, a player or two, but these guys have had the game plan introduced to them and now it's we'll do what we do on a normal Monday, first and second down, some four-minute situations, tomorrow maybe big third down emphasis, Wednesday's practice – cause today's a Monday in our world, I know it's not the right day and people will think 'What's he talking about?' – but our Wednesday practice will be red zone emphasis and crunch situations, two-minute situations, end of the game, end of the half situations. So it's all just really repeating what went on then, and then our plan was to get our Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday done before we got to San Diego, so when we go the night of Wednesday – which is the 24th, in our world, even though it's not Wednesday in everybody else's world – and then we'll have our Thursday walkthrough on Christmas morning and then we'll have really kind of back-to-back two Fridays and then play the game. So it's really a rinse and repeat of last week's five-week block, five-day block.

Mo Osling locked in at safety, listed there on the two-deep?

I've not looked at any two-deep, so I don't know what he's listed at. Mo's a really good football player and you'll see a ton of him in the game. He can play corner, he can play safety, he's a really versatile football player for us, but maybe I think they just put names down cause you gotta plug names in. Two-deep, besides the quarterback, doesn't mean anything, cause mostly everybody in the two-deep plays for us, so.

Clancy Pendergast a candidate for the D-line coach job?

Clancy's here coaching the D-line through the bowl game. He had to get a guy immediately in here, and then obviously with the university, you're not gonna be able to hire a guy one day later, there's obviously paperwork that has to be filed, human resources interviews have to be had. So we're hopeful to nail down the defensive line job here very shortly.

Is he a candidate long term?

Yeah, everybody is.

Out recruiting?

He went out recruiting for a week. So he got an opportunity for, I think, four days or five days in that first window. It was a really short window, those first two days kind of.

What did Clancy bring to the staff when he was an analyst?

Yeah, I mean, just a wealth of experience and a wealth of background. We used a lot of Clancy when we were on the offensive side of the ball, so he would help break down opposing teams' defenses. And then just times like 'Hey, what are they trying to do here? What are they trying to do here? What if we gave them this formation? Even though we haven't seen it on tape, you understand that system – what would your answer be if you were on that side?' So the fact that we were fortunate to have him – both him, Ken Drevnell and Burnsy have been tremendous in terms of the analysts to not only help just from a breakdown standpoint, but they just have such a wealth of knowledge cause they've coached for such a long time that it was really a cool setup to have those guys. We know we're not gonna have them, they're not gonna stay, they're really good football coaches, they're not gonna stay in analyst roles for the rest of their lives and we were just so fortunate to have those guys. I'm indebted to them cause I learned a lot of football spending time with Clancy and Drev and Burnsy this past year.

Starting punter? Do you have someone?

Yeah. We do.

Who is it?

We'll see, so that'll be a Christmas present to everybody.

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