After a frustrating first season at UCLA, Nico Iamaleava had a decision to make.
Did the star quarterback want to go to the NFL? Find another school? Return for another year as a Bruin even though the team was in the midst of a coaching switch?
UCLA quarterback Nico Iamaleava loves everything about new coach Bob Chesney. Jan Kim Lim/UCLA athletics “The first time after I met Coach Chesney, you know,” Iamaleava said after practice Saturday, “I was pretty sold on staying here.”
“I thought just his energy, man,” Iamaleava said. “He was a great human being, you know, high-energy and just very charismatic where I didn’t really sense any fakeness from him.”
A new coach accompanied a fresh situation for his quarterback. Unlike a year ago, when Iamaleava became the story of college football amid his abrupt spring departure from Tennessee, he’s now fully settled in at UCLA.
He’ll be able to follow a full spring with a fall training camp that doesn’t feel like it’s stuck on fast forward, not to mention a season without the upheaval of a coaching change.
“A lot of our conversations are about that, like, ‘Hey, this is different this time around,’ ” Chesney said.
What’s impressed Chesney most about the redshirt junior quarterback is his prioritizing everybody else on the field.
“He does such a good job of communicating, getting everybody on the same page, doing it with urgency,” Chesney said, “and then just relentlessly pursuing it.”
Chesney labeled Iamaleava as the player who spends the most time in meeting rooms, studying film and working on his leadership skills. Perhaps it should come as no surprise, then, that Iamaleava received the most votes when teammates were asked to select leaders.
“You go back through the greatest teams when they go, ‘Our greatest player was our hardest worker and our greatest leader and paid attention to all the little things’ — that’s what you want, right?” Chesney said. “If your best players aren’t that, it’s a pretty uphill battle. So to have him being just that is important.”
Iamaleava’s ability to self-diagnose mistakes has wowed new offensive coordinator Dean Kennedy. During a practice earlier in the week, the quarterback came over to tell Kennedy what he had done wrong after completing a few passes that should have been released a little earlier.
“Before I could go tell him,” Kennedy said, “he was the first one to say, ‘I should have snapped my eyes a little faster.’ So you’re starting to see him correct his mistakes at a pretty high level, at a fast pace, and that’s what you want.”
Iamaleava is trying to pack a little weight onto his 6-foot-6, 218-pound frame to better absorb hits, hoping to reach 225 pounds. Getty Images Iamaleava also has some ideas about improving an offense that averaged just 18.2 points per game last season, when the quarterback completed 64.4% of his passes for 1,928 yards with13 touchdowns and seven interceptions. He’s trying to pack a little weight onto his 6-foot-6, 218-pound frame to better absorb hits, hoping to reach 225 pounds.
“I’ve got to keep eating,” he said, “keep getting that protein in.”
An offensive line that could have as many as four new starters might also help, along with a group of running backs that Iamaleava called one of the best in the nation. Kennedy has helped Iamaleava better understand the nuances of managing an offense, including which defensive looks present opportunities favorable to the run game.
Iamaleava is also prioritizing cleaning up all the pre-snap penalties that hindered the team’s offense a year ago, mostly as a result of false starts.
A year after so much went wrong, a new coach has made Iamaleava feel like everything’s coming together right on time.
“Coach Chesney’s a winner, man,” Iamaleava said. “You know, everywhere he’s been, he’s been a winner. I think just that winning mentality he brings to the table makes guys buy in and want to play for a coach like that.”
