Sunday practice report: "All those things are great signs of an offense progressing and getting better"

UCLA completed its first week of fall football practice with encouraging signs for the offense. "Things are just falling into place, with repetition," said head coach Karl Dorrell. Those are the positive signs you look at; you just need consistency now.

"This team is old enough to know what our expectations are and I think they are understanding that better."

Quarterback Ben Olson looked increasingly sharp during the practice and several of the wide receivers showed their skills, including an especially nice catch by Dominique Johnson. There were also strong performances from running back Kahlil Bell and fullback Trevor Theriot, practicing with the first string while Michael Pitre recovers from injury.

"I think our team speed has really improved overall," said Dorrell. "Both [Bell] and Chris [Markey] look explosive. They look like they have some burst to them and really have some shifty, quick feet, can change, move and go and those are things we worked on in the off-season and it’s definitely showing right now."

On the injury front, cornerback Rodney Van participated in a limited action on Sunday, but safety Chris Horton and offensive guard Shannon Tevaga did not practice. Horton is apparently pretty close to returning the practice, but "Shannon is having a lot of pain in his wrist." said Dorrell, "even though we did X-rays and they were negative." Defensive tackle Kevin Brown "tweaked his quad" according to Dorrell, who said "he should be fine."

Pitre is still out. "He’s our most experienced fullback," said Dorrell. "He missed most of spring, if not all of spring as a matter of fact and we have some guys who had some reps in the spring that know our system and they’re doing it well.

"Pitre, he did a great job his first three or four days, but now with his knee, we have to get the inflammation to calm down and things like that. Those other guys know our stuff, but we’re missing the depth. We have two really good guys, with Theriot and Chad Moline that really know our offense, but those guys can’t take the bulk of all the reps, so you’re just missing a body. And [Pitre] will be back soon."

On Olson, Dorrell noted that "I felt today that he was a lot sharper. You get to that point in camp where you get so much information thrown at you and then when the installation starts to slow down, he’s able to digest everything that we’ve put before that time. So today was a real positive sign of him handling a lot of the stuff we’ve put in the first five days and now he can just keep reviewing that to be as sharp as he can be. He looked like he was having that type of sharpness today."

Overall, Dorrell was happy with the first week. "I’m real pleased with how the first week went. We’ve done a lot of work and guys are getting better and our goals are still intact."