UCLAs Zach Charbonnet has returned home, and its motivated him to be the breakout star for a b

June 28, 2024

Chip Kelly knew Zach Charbonnet was gifted. The UCLA coach tried hard to land the Class of 2019 four-star recruit, but the big running back was set on going to Michigan, where he set a program freshman record for most rushing touchdowns. Kelly, though, didn’t really realize just how special Charbonnet was until the Bruins’ first spring practice in May.

Kelly has been around more than his share of elite backs. In 2010 and 2011, LaMichael James led the nation in rush yards per game in Kelly’s Oregon Ducks system. Kenjon Barner ranked fourth in the country in 2012. Then, in his first season with the Philadelphia Eagles in 2013, Kelly helped LeSean McCoy win the NFL rushing title. Kelly knew Charbonnet was physical and had good feet. What he didn’t really know was just how good his vision was.

High school tape is usually not filmed from the rear angle. Coaches often only get to watch it from the side view, so it’s tougher to get a gauge on what the back is really seeing. But it only took a few carries for Kelly’s own eyes to bug out at his new back.

“I was like ‘WHOA!’” Kelly told The Athletic. “I think he has elite vision, and if you didn’t coach him, that is difficult to tell. In that first spring practice, he did this jump-cut slide, and slide again, and popped out the other side … Wow.

“We knew he was that big and that fast, but a lot of times, you see guys they don’t have the vision. You tell them to run right, they run right and (are) going to run up the back of people. He’s really unique that way.”

In the Bruins’ opener, the 6-foot-1, 222-pound Charbonnet had a dazzling debut, rushing for 106 yards and three touchdowns on just six carries. The last touchdown against Hawaii, Charbonnet shook an unblocked linebacker and jumped back inside before he got to the second level.

“A lot of kids get surprised by that because we didn’t come off on a double team on the linebacker and he went for a touchdown,” Kelly said. “He has as good a vision as anybody I’ve ever been around.”

Last weekend, UCLA and Charbonnet made a statement on a national stage by whipping No. 16 LSU, 38-27. The Bruins played a big, physical SEC program — 20 months removed from winning the national title — and dominated. It was a coming out party for Kelly, the Bruins and their budding star running back, who is an ideal fit for one of the sport’s sharpest offensive minds.

The best window into this occurred early in the fourth quarter against LSU. The Tigers had just narrowed the margin to 24-20. UCLA had a second-and-9 from its own 41. Kelly called their Duo play. They had three tight ends lined up on the left side, slot receiver Kyle Phillips was next to their right tackle on the other side, and quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson was under center. Charbonnet was eight yards behind him.

UCLA has a really diverse run game with a few under center runs. Here, Kelly called the windback play with a WR lead that the Rams popularized.

Charbonnet can’t get outside because the end shed his block but finds the cutback lane for a big gain pic.twitter.com/a1fi98rHZ5

— Ted Nguyen (@FB_FilmAnalysis) September 5, 2021

LSU already had been struggling to get its run fits. Kelly had them reeling — both mentally and physically — because he had their heads spinning after showing the Tigers so much unbalanced play out of formations with end over and tackle over, that it had been a challenge just to get lined up facing a variety of 11-, 12- and 13-personnel groupings, keeping them off guard all night.

On the snap, Phillips darted across the formation behind the line as the Bruins line fired out. Kelly had shown this play earlier against the Tigers, but with two pullers coming across — not just Phillips, who was clearing out the backside help as a defensive back trailed him over to the left side.

Charbonnet grabbed the handoff, and the play developed as if he was going to sprint around UCLA’s left side. He took three steps and noticed his O-line had walled off the left side of the LSU defense, pinning defensive tackle Neil Farrell and linebacker Bug Strong, who was engulfed by 370-pound guard Atonio Mafi, creating a seam. Charbonnet dropped his hips, planted his left foot and burst through the gap just as it widened and raced up the field for 43 yards. It was the play that broke the Tigers’ back, and broke the game open.

“That’s one thing about him: He has the vision to see that stuff,” Kelly said. “Some backs miss that hole because they don’t see it. The guys with great vision have the ability to take it out the back door if it’s presented. Usually the back door is not presented, but he’s got the vision to look, and he’s patient, so he sees a lot of things.

“He has the vision, the patience and the physicality when he gets there. Most of the time you may have a guy with the vision and the patience, but he’s not a physical kid. Or you have a guy who is physical but doesn’t have the vision or the patience. He’s got it all.”

As the football world rediscovers Kelly — he’d gone 10-21 overhauling a program that only had 57 scholarship players and seven offensive lineman in his first spring at UCLA — Charbonnet has emerged as the breakout star in the long-awaited breakthrough season. Through two games, he’s gained 223 yards and scored four touchdowns on just 17 touches. More than half of his 17 carries have gone for at least 10 yards, and five of them have gone for more than 20 yards.

His new teammates were believers long before he’d started carving up opposing defenses or even their own in the spring.

“The things that impress me the most are his physicality and the stamina that he has,” said Thompson-Robinson. “We’re out there doing wind sprints and all that, he’s out there killing it. I thought I was killing it, and he’s past me.”

Charbonnet, a homegrown product who played high school football with Oregon All-American Kayvon Thibodeaux, is not much for the spotlight. He’s about as low-key as you can get. His mom, Seda, describes him as an old soul. He loves movies, Disneyland and anime. He’s pleasant and polite but lives by something his mom has harped on with him — “She told me, Don’t talk a lot. Just show it through work,’” Charbonnet said. “That’s something I’ve always kept with me.”

Asked whether he grew up watching Kelly’s frenetic Oregon teams, Charbonnet said he doesn’t remember much of them.

“I didn’t really get into football till I was 11, 12, 13. I’m still learning a lot.” And his explanation of how Kelly’s system differs from the one at Michigan with Jim Harbaugh? “I just feel more comfortable in this style of offense.”

Charbonnet (second from left) and his family, courtesy of his mother, Seda

The thing he missed most back when he was in Ann Arbor was his family, he said. And this is the area that gets Charbonnet going. He and his little sister Bella, a 14-year-old with special needs, are extremely close. She is his inspiration and a big factor in his seemingly indomitable work ethic that has been forged with offseasons built around pre-dawn runs up hills or deep in the sand at the beach as part of two-a-day workouts.

“That’s just driven me a lot, especially on days when I’m tired,” he said. “I just see her up at 6 A.M. to 10 at night, she’s always full of energy no matter what she does. That just motivates me a lot to not worry about getting tired and always find some energy from somewhere.”

Seda said Bella has given Zach a unique perspective on life and on people. “Whenever she goes, she’s the mayor,” Seda said. “She’s just a very loving person. She doesn’t see negativity in people. She’s so very happy. Sometimes we say we need to be more like her.”

Earlier in the offseason, Bella’s dad (Ben Hall, Charbonnet’s stepfather) brought her over to the Bruins football complex and Kelly gave her a tour and she spent the day with the team.

“Their whole relationship is awesome,” Kelly said. “She’s an awesome person. It was really cool to see. The fact that he’s home now and close to her is such a benefit. It’s a really neat story.”

Seda grew up in Paris and moved to the United States as a teenager. She is part Cambodian and part Chinese. She has tried to install some of the key tenets of her Asian heritage, she says, the morals, the values and the respect into her children.

“I love that about the culture,” she said. One area where she veered from that was relenting about letting her son play tackle football, something she was adamantly opposed to. She finally agreed to let him play in seventh grade — as long as his school work didn’t suffer.

She has noticed how Zach, her eldest child, is so in love with the game. “That’s his therapy,” she said. “Like a mediation on that field. That’s how he’s wired.”

Charbonnet and Bella

Charbonnet said it took him a few years to convince his mom to give him the green light to play football. “Finally, my pops (Ben Hall) talked to her and was able to convince her to allow me to set an age where she’d be comfortable with me playing,” he said. That was in seventh grade. “I wanted to do boxing around that age too, and she was like, ‘OK, we’re not doing that.’ So football was the next step. She still freaks out sometimes with me playing a physical sport, but that’s OK.”

And Kelly is just thrilled to have him. The guy who has sparked his offense is also someone who probably would be their best special teams player, but not in the way you might expect a running back to have an impact there. The breakaway back wouldn’t be a returner but rather a front guard on the punt team thanks to his physicality and grit.

“He loves doing it—and loves practicing it,” Kelly said. “Things that you wouldn’t think a running back would want to do, he loves to do.”

(Top photo: Ronald Martinez / Getty Images)

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