Sometime in February of 2023 on the campus of SMU an award banquet will be held to present the Doak Walker Award to the nation’s top running back. Doak Walker was a three-time All American and winner of the 1948 Heisman Trophy while playing for Southern Methodist University. He was drafted in December of 1948 in the third round of the 1949 draft by the Boston Yanks who sold his rights to the Detroit Lions. Because of his size of 5’ 11” and just 173 pounds folks predicted that he wouldn’t survive in the NFL, but he did much more than that. In 1950 he was the All-NFL Rookie of the Year, the league-scoring champion, and a Pro Bowl participant. At the end of his six year career he had been named All-NFL five times and selected to five Pro Bowls. The list of past winners is impressive. Guys like Ohio State’s Eddie George in 1995, 1997 and 1998’s winner Ricky Williams from Texas, in 2000 it was Ladainlian Tomlinson, Reggie Bush in 2005, the Cardinal’s Toby Gerhart in 2009, Wisconsin’s Melvin Gordon in 2014, Stanford’s Bryce Love in 2017, and Jonathan Taylor from Wisconsin—twice in 2018 and 2019. After watching UCLA beat Utah this past Saturday it wasn’t hard to see why UCLA’s Zach Charbonnet is on the watch list for that award.
Charbonnet and QB Dorian Thompson-Robinson combined for just three clicks shy of 500 yards and 5 TD’s in UCLA’s dominant 42-32 (should have been 42-25) win over No. 11 Utah in the Rose Bowl. If you were surprised you shouldn’t have been because on paper UCLA was the only team in the PAC-12 going in that matched up defensively with the Utes and on Saturday they outplayed them on both sides of the ball with a couple Utah mistakes thrown in for good measure. For UCLA that makes a perfect 6-0 start to the season, but their winning streak actually goes back three more games into last season. After four possessions and four punts to start the game UCLA got it going and never looked back once the first mistake was made—a Cameron Rising interception that led to a UCLA TD run by Dorian Thompson Robinson seven plays later to go up 7-0 with time running out in the 1st Qtr. Half-way through the 2nd Qtr UCLA would hit paydirt again, this time a DTR pass to Jake Bobo. But since it was in between a Utah field goal and TD the Bruins went into the locker room up just 14-10 in a game that still looked as though it could be a defensive battle the whole way.
That changed dramatically in the 2nd Half. Getting the ball first after the break UCLA would go on a 9 play 48 yard drive into the end zone again on DTR’s 2nd TD pass of the day, this time to Kam Brown. The Bruins would end up scoring a TD on four of their five second half drives. Although Utah kept up for a while matching them TD-for-TD and getting to within three points, 28-25, early in the 4th Qtr UCLA, fueled by a 33 yard kick-off return by Kazmeir Allen and a 70 yard TD pass by DTR to Logan Loya would go up 35-25 and then 42-25 five plays later after a Cam Rising fumble and 37 yard return down to the Utah 1 yard line with Zach Charbonnet doing the honors this time. Utah did score again on a pick six thrown by DTR with just 30 seconds left [thinking about next week maybe] to make the final score look a little more respectable on paper at 42-32, but make no mistake about it UCLA dominated this game taking just over four minutes of possession to score their last three TD’s.
Minus the throw-away TD when it no longer mattered, Dorian Thompson-Robinson had another banner day for UCLA connecting on almost 80% of his passes for just one yard shy of 300, 4 TD’s, and that one pick to go along with another TD on the ground. His uber talented RB Zach Charbonnet rushed 22 times for 198 yards and the other TD on the ground for the Bruins. Senior WR Jake Bobo was the recipient of two of those DTR TD passes with Junior WR’s Logan Loya and Cam Brown collecting the other two. Utah Junior QB Cameron Rising threw almost as many yards as DTR at a 70% clip but was only able to put points up on the board when he ran the ball in himself, accounting for two of Utah’s three TD’s with Junior RB Tavion Thomas picking up the other. Collectively Rising, Thomas, and Sophomore RB Micah Bernard rushed 43 times for 192 yards.
The Bruin’s 5th year QB felt he had something to prove with the Bruins having lost five straight to the Utes by an average of 27 points. In the process DTR became UCLA’s career leader in passing TD’s. That’s even more impressive when you consider that Drew Olson, Cade McNown, Billy Kilmer, Gary Beban, and Troy Aikman are below him on that list. The Defensive Game Ball should go to UCLA Linebacker Darius Muassau whose interception and forced fumble both led to Bruin TD’s. Utah’s head coach Kyle Whittingham summed it up like this; “The whole problem really in the second half was we couldn’t get any stops. They had a bunch of big plays both in the receiving game and the rushing game. That really is what did us in was their big play capability.”
After a lot of home cooking UCLA gets a bye week at a perfect time in their schedule as they will hit the road to take on the Oregon Saturday, October 22nd. Utah gets to go back home but will need to get over this loss quickly as they’ll be facing USC this next Saturday. It’s possible after Lincoln Riley’s blistering start to his head coaching tenure at USC that he could face his first loss. With an unbeaten UCLA and USC on top of the PAC-12 conference the defending champion Utes can’t afford to loose another. Should be a good one.