UCLA football coach Deshaun Foster is welcoming fans and alumni to the Bruins’ spring football practices, a change from previous coaches’ approach to workouts. (Michael Owen Baker/ For The Times)
For a moment, it were as if nothing had changed. UCLA athletic director Martin Jarmond walked onto the practice field Tuesday morning and found his new football coach in a familiar spot.
“He caught me over there by the running backs,” DeShaun Foster said with a smile after the Bruins’ second spring practice and first that was open to the public. “It was like, man, if you had come out here a little earlier you would have seen me on the defensive field.”
After going from running backs coach to head coach, Foster has made some changes of his own in an attempt to give his team more of a family feel beyond welcoming fans, recruits and former players to practice. Names adorned the backs of jerseys for the first time anyone who had been around the program for decades could remember.
Was that done to help a staff that includes six new coaches more quickly learn the players? Nope. Foster wanted to make things easier for reporters.
Read more: ‘I want to have fun while playing football.’ UCLA’s DeShaun Foster details plans
“I just think that you guys should know who the players are instead of numbers and stuff like that,” Foster said. “Coaches better learn everybody’s names, but for you guys to see people, I thought that would be better off.”
There were the usual rhythms of spring practice. Whistles blew, bodies accelerated, blue padded dummies thumped to the ground and popped back up.
One voice repeatedly rose above the others. It belonged to new offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy, who called his players back into a huddle after not liking what he saw.
“We should be communicating with each other!” Bieniemy…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/ucla-opens-spring-football-practice-214424455.html
Author : LA Times
Publish date : 2024-04-02 21:44:24
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