Derek Carr joins Chesney's staff as Iamaleava settles in
Bob Chesney's first UCLA camp brought in a Super Bowl-less but 15-year NFL arm to tutor Nico Iamaleava, while a transfer linebacker's eligibility fight played out in public.
Carr signs on to help Iamaleava run the new offense
UCLA made it official on August 10: former NFL quarterback Derek Carr has joined Bob Chesney's staff as a special advisor to the head coach, according to CFBHome and Pete Nakos. Carr's brief is specific — helping Chesney and offensive coordinator Dean Kennedy game-plan, and working directly with the UCLA quarterbacks, which in year one of the Chesney era means Nico Iamaleava.
That matters because Iamaleava is the whole story of this camp. Chesney, after the first practice at the Wasserman Football Center, said his quarterback looked "a lot more comfortable... a lot more comfortable in his leadership, a lot more comfortable in the mastery of the playbook," a marked shift in tone from the uncertainty that followed Iamaleava into Westwood. A 15-year NFL starter now sitting in on install meetings is the kind of hire a program makes when it has decided the quarterback is worth building the entire operation around.
Chesney arrived from James Madison with seven assistants in tow, including Kennedy and defensive coordinator Colin Hitschler, and this is the first fall camp where all of that machinery is running at once. Adding Carr on top of it is a signal about where the program's patience and resources are pointed this fall.
A transfer linebacker's eligibility played out on Twitter
The Big Ten adopted new guidelines this week governing NFL-adjacent transfers, and UCLA spent August 25 confirming it does not cost them JMU linebacker transfer Trent Hendrick. "Our student athletes are eligible under the guidelines adopted today," the school said in a statement relayed by Pete Thamel — good news specifically for Hendrick, who arrived with a temporary restraining order already in hand.
Thamel's follow-up spelled out why Hendrick was clear when others were not: he had only taken part in a rookie minicamp tryout and never signed an NFL contract, unlike a pair of Indiana defensive linemen who still need their own court rulings before they can suit up. Pete Nakos confirmed the same read a few minutes later, reporting that the league's new prohibition is not expected to touch Hendrick's status at UCLA because he was in camp with the Browns and Chiefs but never inked a deal.
It is a bureaucratic story, but it is also a real one for a defense that needed the roster addition — a transfer linebacker very nearly got squeezed out by a conference-wide rule change before he ever played a down in Westwood, and instead he is in camp.
Last season ended on a five-game skid and a loss to USC
There is no 2026 form yet — UCLA sits at 0-0 with the opener still a week away — but last season's finish is still the context anyone walks into this year carrying. The Bruins closed 2025 by dropping five straight: 6-56 at Indiana, 21-28 at home to Nebraska, 10-48 at Ohio State, 14-48 at home against Washington, and finally 10-29 on the road at USC on November 30 to end the year.
That kind of stretch — outscored 61-209 across the last four of those five — is exactly the sort of season that gets a coaching staff cleaned out, and it is why Chesney and his group are the ones now running preseason camp instead of the group that presided over it. The USC loss was the last competitive snapshot of this program before the offseason turned it over.
First Pac-12 reunion since the exodus, and it's a pick 'em
UCLA opens the Chesney era on September 5 at California, and it's worth pausing on what that actually is: the first meeting between these longtime Pac-12 rivals since both schools left the conference after the 2023 season, per 247Sports. Cal is also breaking in a new coach, Tosh Lupoi, and is expecting a sellout crowd at California Memorial Stadium for a Friday night game — its biggest home atmosphere in close to a decade, according to SI's Cal coverage.
The line opened at UCLA -1.5 with the total set at 55.5, which is about as even as a season opener gets between two programs installing new systems under new coaches. Cal's most recent form on the board is a 31-35 loss at Hawai'i last season, so neither side arrives with anything current to lean on — this is Chesney and Iamaleava against Lupoi and sophomore quarterback Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele, both getting their first real look at each other in front of what Berkeley is calling its biggest crowd in years.