Bruins Get All Mixed Up in Secondary

Jason Bell watched on TV at home in Long Beach, mostly while stretched out on the living room floor. He would have been in Palo Alto last Saturday with the rest of the UCLA secondary except for the sore right heel that still has him limping all these months later.

And then:

“My stomach started to hurt.”

It beat the alternative: being there. The other Bruin defensive backs must have been singed from getting torched so much by Stanford, their leg muscles must have ached from chasing Cardinal receivers, their ears must have been ringing in anticipation of the verbal abuse ahead.

“We’re sure we’re going to catch the blame for it,” senior Ryan Roques said after the 42-32 defeat. “Obviously, we should have had a better game than we did. We’ll catch the blame, but we’ll take it like men.”

Coach Bob Toledo didn’t really bomb his secondary until two days later. But then he gave it like a frustrated man, changing two of the four starting positions for this week’s game at Arizona State and confirming that the season-long problems of 1998 have carried over.

They may not be the same problems, because at least players’ confusion over the complicated system of then-defensive coordinator Nick Aliotti has disappeared. But it has become the major problem of ’99 nonetheless. All Stanford did was point that out statistically.

“You’d have to be blind not to see it,” Toledo said without prompting. “Our secondary players were horrible. We gave up too many big plays.

“Our front people are playing pretty well. Our linebackers are playing pretty well. . . . But our secondary, and this is no secret, is not playing well. And that’s obvious to everybody who’s watched us play.”

On a day when the Bruins contained the Stanford running game and the defensive line put pressure on two quarterbacks, UCLA gave up a record 465 yards passing. Most of those--324 yards, along with five touchdowns--came from backup Joe Borchard after starter Todd Husak left because of bruised ribs early in the second quarter. Flanker Troy Walters had 278 yards, the third-best showing in conference history, on nine catches.

By Monday, Toledo had benched cornerback Joe Hunter, moved Roques there from strong safety and made Eric Whitfield the replacement for Roques. But even the coach did not pretend that this is the cure.

“We’ve got what we’ve got,” Toledo said. “This is no quick fix. We can do some patchwork, but there is no quick fix. Experience. Health. Recruiting.”

Missing. Missing. Often missing.

Experience was also a factor last season, when sophomore Marques Anderson started six games and redshirt freshman Jason Stephens started seven. But it’s even worse in 1999: The Bruins had freshmen at both corners the previous two games before Hunter was demoted, and free safety Joey Strycula was a senior who had little more than a rookie’s time in the secondary. Most of his three years had been logged on special teams.

Health has cost them a starter at right cornerback. Bell had surgery in March to eliminate bone spurs in his right heel, then lasted only two games before being forced out by continuing pain. He was about to be moved to the left side to make room for Ricky Manning Jr. before the departure. So Hunter stayed in the starting lineup--a fact for which Stanford soon became grateful.

Recruiting delivered Manning, the impressive freshman the Bruins are convinced will be a star. But all of the other starters arrived in 1995. Bell came in ’96. The freshman class of ’99 includes only three defensive backs, Manning from Fresno, Ryan Wikert from Temecula Valley High and Kevin Brant from Bethesda, Md. If it’s bad now, imagine the vacuum next season, when Roques, Whitfield, Strycula and, unless he redshirts, Bell will be gone.

Putting the predicament in historical context makes it even more glaring. UCLA has a tradition of great defensive backs. Since the 1980s, Kenny Easley, Don Rogers, Darryl Henley and Carlton Gray were consensus All-Americans. Eric Turner, Matt Darby, Marvin Goodwin and Shaun Williams made someone’s first team this decade. Five others were taken within the last 10 NFL drafts, including third-round selection Larry Atkins last time.

And now, this.

The instability in the secondary has become so bad that the constant change has become a concern of its own to coaches. Strycula is the only defensive back to be in the opening lineup all four games at the same position. By Game 5, Saturday afternoon at Arizona State, the Bruins will probably have already had eight players start at the four spots. Whitfield will be the fourth starter at strong safety, Roques having been the only player there to hold the spot two weeks in a row.

“We sensed that Toledo’s a little frustrated with the DBs, and that’s understandable because we gave up all those yards,” Strycula said. “But we just have to take it like men. We have to come out and play better.”

So many things have already gone wrong:

* One potential starter, Anderson, was dismissed from school until January because the handicapped-parking scam followed previous undisclosed campus incidents, ending his season.

* Another starter, Roques, was suspended for the first two games, then was moved from safety to cornerback during the middle of the Stanford game to replace Hunter.

* Another starter, Bell, has missed two games because of an injury that was supposed to cost him only spring practice and now says he will be out at least two more.

“I know if I was out there, certain things wouldn’t happen,” Bell said. “It’s hard to watch.”

* Stephens went from the opening lineup in the final seven games last season and the opener this year to free-fall mode. He’s now the third-string strong safety, behind Whitfield and Julius Williams, the Game 2 starter.

“He’s got nobody to blame but himself,” Toledo said, a statement with which Stephens agrees.

Such is life in the secondary, the primary concern.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

UCLA Starting Secondary

UCLA’s lineup changes in the secondary this season (* projected):

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Col 1: Game Col 2: Left Cornerback Col 3: Strong Safety Col 4: Free Safety Col 5: Right Cornerback -Col 1: Boise State Col 2: Joe Hunter Col 3: Jason Stephens Col 4: Joey Strycula Col 5: Jason Bell -Col 1: Ohio State Col 2: Hunter Col 3: Julius Williams Col 4: Strycula Col 5: Bell -Col 1: Fresno State Col 2: Hunter Col 3: Ryan Roques Col 4: Strycula Col 5: Ricky Manning Jr. -Col 1: Stanford Col 2: Hunter Col 3: Roques Col 4: Strycula Col 5: Manning -Col 1: Arizona State* Col 2: Roques Col 3: Eric Whitfield Col 4: Strycula Col 5: Manning -ET

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