UCLA’s last two seasons in the Big Ten have been rough enough to leave little room for optimism on paper. The Bruins are 8-16 over that stretch, and the 2025 season bottomed out at 3-9, with the team struggling on both sides of the ball and ending up as one of the conference’s worst groups.
But the reset came fast. Head coach DeShaun Foster was fired halfway through the season, and once the year ended, UCLA turned to former James Madison coach Bob Chesney to lead the turnaround.
Chesney arrives with a strong recent résumé. He guided James Madison to a 12-2 season, a Sun Belt title and a spot in the College Football Playoff in 2025, and he now takes over a UCLA program that clearly needs a jolt.
He’s also bringing help with him. Running back Wayne Knight is coming to Westwood from that JMU team, and quarterback Nico Iamaleava will be back for next season after a disappointing first year with the Bruins in 2025.
UCLA won’t be talked about as a National Championship threat, but a big jump feels possible. The schedule has some real obstacles, yet there are also games that look manageable. Purdue and San Diego State stand out as matchups the Bruins should be able to handle, while Michigan and Oregon look like the kind of games they would need a miracle to steal.
That mix of a new staff, key roster additions and a quarterback with star potential gives UCLA a path back toward respectability. A bowl game, which would be the Bruins’ first since 2023, feels within reach if the pieces come together the way they hope.
In Other News...
UCLA Just Won A Four Star Recruiting Battle Fans Craved
UCLAs recruiting surge under Bob Chesney keeps showing up in the secondary, where the Bruins have made a clear point of stacking talent in the 2027 class. The group is already ranked inside the national top 20, and the emphasis on safeties and cornerbacks has helped give the class a stronger defensive spine than the program had coming into this cycle.
The latest addition came after Myles Baker toured multiple schools and then changed course, a sign the Bruins are winning more of the battles they need to win. Baker joins a secondary haul that now gives UCLA real depth and more flexibility on the back end, with three cornerbacks and three safeties in the class and another major piece added to a group that has quickly become one of the more promising parts of the rebuild. [Read more 🡒]
UCLA May Have Finally Found The Backfield Answer It Needed
UCLA has spent the offseason trying to remake its roster through the portal, and the backfield looks like one of the spots where that work could pay off quickly. Bob Chesney has already added 45 players, but the arrival of Wayne Knight from James Madison stands out as one of the more important pickups for an offense that needed help on the ground after a difficult year running the ball.
Knight arrives with the kind of resume that makes him easy to spotlight, and UCLA will pair him with returning backs Jaivian Thomas and Anthony Woods in hopes of giving the Bruins more balance. There is still a familiar question hanging over the move, though, because the next step is less about what Knight has already done than whether his game translates cleanly to the Big Ten grind. [Read more 🡒]
Jalen Woods Feels Like A UCLA Building Block Fans Can Trust
Jalen Woods has taken the kind of path UCLA coaches love to point to when they talk about building a defense the right way. A three-star recruit out of St. John Bosco, he arrived with offers from programs like Miami, Oregon and Arizona State, then worked his way from a minimal freshman role into a steadier presence in the Bruins' linebacker rotation as the years went on.
His rise matters even more because it came during a period of real change around the program, with Chip Kelly gone, DeShaun Foster taking over and plenty of roster movement around him. Woods opted to stay put through that transition, and his growth from spot duty to a more trusted contributor, including his first career start against USC, is the sort of stability UCLA can use as it tries to settle into Foster's new era. [Read more 🡒]