Chip Kelly breaks down the progress he's seen from UCLA wide receivers

The UCLA offense is going to look a lot different this year. Many of its top players are no longer wearing the gold and blue.

Quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson was selected in the fifth round of the 2023 NFL Draft by the Cleveland Browns. The three Bruins leaders in receptions from last year’s Bruins team — Jake Bobo, Kazmeir Allen and Zach Charbonnet — have all moved on to the NFL. Charbonnet was also UCLA’s leading rusher with 1,359 yards on the ground to go along with 14 touchdowns.

But there are some players who are stepping up in spring camp and putting themselves on the radar as players to watch in 2023.

Two of those players at the wide receiver position are Ryan Cragun and Braden Pegan.

Both those guys have done a really nice job,” UCLA head coach Chip Kelly said during a media availability on April 18. ” I would say for that whole group, they’re all heavily involved. I think when you look at the rep count of all our receivers — one of the byproducts of how we train is that everybody gets reps. We’re limited in the rotation with the offensive line of just being two deep but almost every other position with three and four deep so those guys are all getting a ton of reps. That’s one of the reasons we do so many team sessions, half-line seven-on-sevens, groups things like that so that we can get actual live reps.

“When you have that many players, it’s why we can practice for the full amount of time that we have. Our first year here we had 60 kids in spring ball. We actually split spring ball up. Started before break and had to take a two week rest and then try to start back up just because we couldn’t train at the level of wanted to train at. Now when we have almost 110 guys out here, we can do that. I think that whole group is doing well.”

Cragun and Pegan are two players with different journeys to Westwood. Cragun is entering his sixth season of college football and second year with UCLA. He originally played at Penn before transferring after the 2021 season.

Pegan is a second-year player out of California who played in four games last season to preserve his redshirt.

Kelly is excited about what he has seen from both UCLA players so far.

“Braden is a really talented player that we (were) fortunate to redshirt,” Kelly said. “He did play in four games for us last year and really excited where he is. He can run. He tracks the ball really, really well. He’s a fast learner. We’re excited about his progress and then Ryan transferred in from Penn. He didn’t have the benefit of spring ball last year because he wasn’t here for that. He just got here in the summertime. Because of the extra COVID year, I think he’s really capitalized on that. Worked very hard in the offseason to put himself in a position where we’re gonna need a lot of depth out there anyways, and I think Ryan’s gonna be a big part of that.”