UCLA practice takeaways: Chesney's involvement, women's basketball inspiration, Iamaleava's influence

The UCLA football team held its third spring practice of the 2026 season today. Here are three major takeaways from the day's events.

Bob Chesney in on Drills

Football head coaches rarely get as involved in individual drills as Bob Chesney does. Throughout UCLA’s first few spring practices, Chesney has constantly placed himself in the middle of the action, yelling and getting in faces with as much intensity as the players themselves. Nowhere was that clearer than during a defensive drill during which players practiced shedding blocks and recovering fumbles. Chesney stood right next to the participants, barking out instructions and even getting on the ground himself on a couple of occasions.

“There’s only one of me, right?” Chesney said. “Their position coach gets to have a pretty deep relationship with them. Spend a lot of time together. I am spread pretty thin amongst everybody. So I think it’s important when I show up, it’s [in] impactful moments. You know, it’s not necessarily the quantity of them, but the quality of them.”

Chesney’s goal is to make every player feel important, and while his background as a player and coach is mostly on defense, he hopes to make an impact throughout the roster.

“I want them to understand that my knowledge doesn’t just ring on one side of the ball and just in one position group,” he said. “I want to make sure that I can add value and back up that position coach when I show up there, and make sure that they feel unified and feel alignment from the top down.”

Can UCLA Women’s Basketball Provide an Example?

In between practices on Saturday and today, Chesney headed to Phoenix to check out the biggest story in UCLA sports right now. He was in attendance as the Bruins women’s basketball team defeated South Carolina to win the first NCAA championship in program history.

“The moment they came out, I was sitting next to [UCLA Athletic Director Martin Jarmond], and I said, ‘I think this thing's already over,’” Chesney said. “I looked at both sides, and I looked at this poise and this joy and [the] smiles on these girls’ faces going into this giant test against a team that was obviously a really, really good basketball team. And to watch them play through it, and then gut it out — and it got really physical right before half, and to think that we could be the more physical team, it’s pretty impressive.”

Led by head coach Cori Close, the team has largely credited their success to their process-driven method and the enthusiasm with which they play, and Chesney hopes some of the same can apply to his team.

“Watching Cori, [watching] her lead her team and understand the process of it, never got caught up in the scoreboard, never gets caught up in the wins and losses, only gets caught up in what they could do in the next moment and live in that moment, that’s all things that certainly stand out,” Chesney said. “I think she’s undeniably herself, which is important. She doesn’t want to be anybody else other than herself … I think we all have to understand that there’s a lot of people trying to be a lot of other people in this profession, and I think it’s important that you gotta find your own way and do what is true to you.”

Chesney has repeatedly emphasized the idea of finding his own voice in his new role as he tries to balance the history and tradition of UCLA football with creating his own era.

Nico Iamaleava’s Leadership Stands Out

The Bruins ran 11-on-11 drills on a few occasions during practice. On the third play during an early session, redshirt junior quarterback Nico Iamaleava threw an incomplete pass, and redshirt junior defensive back Cole Martin let him hear about it.

“That s–t ain’t gonna be open, Nico!” Martin barked. “That s–t ain’t gonna be open!”

Iamaleava did make several good throws in a later session, most notably on a crossing route to wide receiver Brian Rowe and a go route to wide receiver Semaj Morgan, and showed his mobility on some read-option plays. However, Chesney has emphasized Iamaleava’s leadership and preparation more than any between-the-whistles aspect of his game.

“It’s not about him, is the thing that I’m most impressed about,” Chesney said. “It’s about everybody else. When he’s out there on the field, he does such a good job of communicating, getting everybody on the same page, doing it with urgency, and then just relentlessly pursuing it. But there’s nobody that spends more time in the meeting room right now than him. There’s nobody that spends more time on film than him. There’s nobody who spends more time on trying to become the best leader he can for this team than him.”

Iamaleava is in his second season with the Bruins, after a wild first year which included a controversial transfer to UCLA and both his head coach and offensive coordinator being fired. Even though he’s at the same school, this season is a chance for a fresh start in many ways.

“A lot of our conversations are about that,” Chesney said. “”Like, ‘Hey, this is different this time around.’ We did a leadership vote. It was undeniable. He was the number one vote on this entire team to be a leader on this team.”