UCLA was eliminated from contention for the Pac-12 championship game Saturday night with a 48-45 loss at home to USC. Dorian Thompson-Robinson was picked off three times and fumbled once. The Bruins gave up 649 yards of offense to the Trojans. After the game, coach Chip Kelly met with reporters to break down what went wrong.

Here’s everything he said, with video of the press conference below.

On how he’d explain UCLA’s defensive performance

“How do I explain that we lost a three-point ballgame? I think that our players played with great effort today. They did an unbelievable job, and we played against as good a quarterback as I have faced in my college career, watching what Caleb did tonight. I would give Caleb a lot of credit. That is a heck of a quarterback.”

On UCLA’s defense getting three stops early in the game and what changed as the contest progressed

“I think that it’s a long game. I don’t think that you can ever look at just, you had a stop and then it’s going to be stops for the rest of the game. We knew that they were an explosive offense coming in, and they’re a very talented football team. And you’ve got to give them credit. They made one more play than we did tonight.”

On the final drive

“We were in our two-minute offense, which has been very good for us, and I think we were moving the ball. We finally got the ball out. We obviously started deep in our own territory, but we got out to get a little bit of breathing room and then got to a third-and-6. We tried to get a flood route into the boundary and it looked like a defensive end dropped into coverage. He showed up underneath that route – good play by them.”

On QB Dorian Thompson-Robinson

“He’s special and we have talked about it from his first start at Oklahoma until now. His toughness has been on display for the last five years and he’s as tough as they come. That kid is a warrior. We wouldn’t be where we are if we didn’t have the contributions that he has given us. He sets the tone. He sets the tone in practice and sets the tone every single day. You feel for him and you hurt for him, just because I know how much it means to him. You talk about leaving it on the field, Dorian literally leaves it on the field every time he plays. He’s a special guy who everybody around here – he’s up there, and there have been some great quarterbacks, but I think he’s one of those special ones that has gone through that program. As I told those guys in the locker room, we have two more games to play. We have a game against Cal this Friday on a short week, and then we have an opportunity to play in a bowl game and we’ll find out where it is. We owe this group of 27 guys, let’s go out on the right note. We will be back to work tomorrow.”

On USC QB Caleb Williams

“He’s really accurate. He has a great pocket presence. He keeps so many plays alive, to just extend plays. And I think that when he extends plays – he does a great job of extending plays. He is extremely athletic. He’s as accurate as you can be, throwing the football. I think it’s that combination – that rare dual-threat guy that can beat you with his legs and his arm. Sometimes guys are more of a runner, but he throws it as well as anybody I have seen. Good player.”

On Dorian Thompson-Robinson leaving for one play after the medical staff tended to him in the second half

“The medical team handles all of that, so I don’t have any decisions as a coach, nor should I. I don’t have a medical background. Whatever the medical team that saw him – if someone comes out to see you, you have to leave the game for a play. But he was cleared to come back in.”

On UCLA’s timeout at the end of the first half when USC initially missed a field goal and then made it on the second attempt

“Yeah, that was my decision and my decision only. They had rushed out on the field, and I didn’t think the kid – you know, he had missed one earlier. You are just trying to see if you can rattle him a little bit, and it didn’t work. So it was a bad call by me.”

On the importance of that sequence

“Well, it ended up being a three-point game, so it was really important.”

On the Bruins being eliminated from the Pac-12 title race

“Yeah, I don’t think that it’s about the title race. It’s losing this game. That’s the one thing, you don’t try to think about, ‘What’s the ramifications of it?’ Our players gave an unbelievable effort tonight, but we came up short. It’s tough when you talk to them after the game, putting that into words. You can play with the effort that they played with tonight, but that wasn’t good enough. Sometimes that is a very tough lesson for all of us to learn. But you’ve still got to come out tomorrow morning. We will watch tape. We will meet as a staff. And we’ll meet with our players and then get out on the practice field. We have a game on Friday. That’s just the way it goes.”

On pressuring Caleb Williams vs. dropping in coverage

“They called everything tonight to go after him. That was a big sack by [Laiatu] Latu at the end. That got them out of field goal range and put them into the situation where we’d forced them to punt. It gave ourselves a shot. But I think that you need to do everything against them and we did. We blitzed them, we played zone, we dropped guys into coverage. We rushed two, we rushed three, we rushed four, we rushed six. I think that they ran through it all on defense against them.”

On DC Bill McGovern

“Billy is unavailable right now.”

On playing Cal next Friday

“It’s just about coming back to work tomorrow and then getting ready for Cal on Friday. We have a protocol and a process that we will go through the day after every game we play. It’s just sped up this week. Sunday is usually an off day for our players. And then we start our work week on Monday. So it’s just a matter of Sunday is a Monday, and Monday is a Tuesday and Tuesday is a Wednesday, Wednesday is a Thursday. We travel the day before the game and then we will go play. We have protocols in place to handle this short week.”

On measuring the progress made by UCLA in five years against what USC has done in one

“I think it’s different times. You come in and didn’t have a transfer portal here four years ago. You can change things quickly with a transfer portal. We have been beneficial, guys like Zach Charbonnet and (Laiatu) Latu and guys like that have done a nice job coming in for us. But I think something that was built in ’18, it’s a different time. With college football, it’s an ever-changing landscape. I don’t think that you can compare ’22 to ’18 at all. It’s entirely, drastically different.”