UCLA opens spring football workouts with all 19 transfers in place

In case you hadn’t heard, DeShaun Foster is excited.

The UCLA football coach’s favorite catchphrase also applied to his players Tuesday morning — so much so that Foster had to intervene.

Before the Bruins took the field for their first spring practice outside the Wasserman Center, they were so animated while singing in the team meeting room that Foster told them to chill.

“I kind of had to calm them down to get them ready for the special team meeting,” Foster said, “but I love the way the team is approaching this and just hopefully can carry this on to the rest of spring.”

Maybe they were just happy to have completed what Foster called “the most demanding winter that I’ve been part of here at UCLA,” which resulted in a legion of transformed physiques. Foster said freshman running back Karson Cox had packed on eight pounds in roughly 10 weeks. Right tackle Garrett DiGiorgio, now a relatively svelte 320 pounds, reported losing 11 pounds of fat and gaining seven pounds of muscle.

The question is whether the Bruins can throw their weight around on the field after going 5-7 in Foster’s first season. They enter the spring with all 19 transfers reporting for duty, including quarterback Joey Aguilar.

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The transfer from Appalachian State was taking the first repetitions during the roughly 12 minutes of practice drills reporters were allowed to watch Tuesday, firing passes with considerable zing.

Foster acknowledged that Aguilar was likely on track to be the starter based on his massive edge in experience. Aguilar has thrown 850 passes at the Football Bowl Subdivision level. His seven counterparts on UCLA’s roster? Zero.

“He’s gonna go out there first,” Foster said, “but it’s always a competition. Just spring ball, so everybody will get an opportunity to compete, but like you said he does have the most experience in the room.”

Foster said Aguilar’s experience of having played in big-time games against Clemson and North Carolina was one of the reasons the coach wanted to pluck him out of the portal.

“You wanted to get a quarterback that has played,” Foster said of Aguilar, who has thrown for 6,760 yards with 56 touchdowns and 24 interceptions in two seasons, “not somebody that you’re kind of guessing and [trying to] figure out if he can play at this level.”

The coach watching Aguilar most intently Tuesday morning was new offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Tino Sunseri, who helped Indiana’s Kurtis Rourke take the Hoosiers to the College Football Playoff last season.

Foster cited the installation of Sunseri’s offense as the reason he closed most of his spring practices to the media after having granted full access a year ago. Reporters will be allowed to observe one period of drills — roughly 12 to 15 minutes — at each practice, in addition to the three practices open to the public before the spring showcase May 3.

“I got a new offense,” Foster said, “so I don’t really need people out there seeing it.”

But didn’t the Bruins have a new offense under Eric Bieniemy last year?

“It’s a different situation, you know?” Foster said. “People had seen that coordinator last year before” in the NFL.

Foster said he wanted his Year 2 offense to be more balanced than the one that struggled to run the ball under Bieniemy.

“Just set up a little bit more stuff so we can run the ball, have a little bit more play-action, take some shots down the field, stuff like that,” Foster said. “Let’s just kind of use the guys that we have out there and some of the talent at the skill positions that we have.”

Happy homecomings

Linebacker Isaiah Chisom, a transfer from Oregon State who is a native of Palmdale, sounded a common theme about local players wanting to come home to play for UCLA.

“A lot of the guys [on the team] I played with in high school,” Chisom said, “we knew each other before going to whatever college we were going to. Everybody wanted to stay home, it’s just we didn’t have the opportunity back then to do it, but now we do.”

Chisom, a member of the Athletic’s freshman All-American first team after making 75 tackles last season, once played for former Bruins linebacker Reggie Carter, who coaches the same position at Chaminade Prep. Chisom said Carter accompanied him on his visit to UCLA and would be a regular at spring practices.

Etc.

This will be the first season that linebacker JonJon Vaughns has participated in spring practice after giving up his role as a corner outfielder and relief pitcher on the baseball team. … Defensive tackle Gary Smith was back at practice, albeit with a heavy wrap around his right foot, after missing all of last season. Defensive tackle Keanu Williams was working off to the side with other players returning from injury, including tight end Hudson Habermehl and left tackle Reuben Unije.