DeShaun Foster is a man of few words. He plans to make UCLA football the talk of L.A.

The doubts have resurfaced, the same old chatter as before, swirling around DeShaun Foster like an all-out blitz. “People have to lean in to listen to him and hear him,” Mora said, “but the way he presents himself, people gravitate toward him and they trust him and that’s such a big thing.” In Foster’s first season, the Bruins ran for 113.4 yards per game with the same group of running backs who had produced only 84.3 yards the previous year. “It didn’t matter which floor of the athletic department you were on,” said Bobby Field, the UCLA defensive backs coach who oversaw the team’s Orange County recruiting efforts, “you heard the cheer go up when that fax came in, I can assure you.” Long before his excruciating pause at Big Ten media day, Foster suffered from performance anxiety. “I mean, here’s a guy, he broke two tackles in the backfield, he broke two at the line of scrimmage and he broke at least one or two at the pylon when he dove into the end zone, so man, I mean, that right there, there’s no doubt about it that we’re going to the Super Bowl, OK?” Foster’s other timeless touchdown, a 33-yarder two weeks later during the Panthers’ loss to the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XXXVIII, lives on in the photo of the running back diving into the end zone that adorns one wall inside Jim Skipper’s suburban Phoenix home. “Having someone who loves it and wants to be there and has those relationships and understands how it works behind the scenes a little bit is going to help them,” Ball said, “and I honestly think you’re already seeing how that’s been able to help them with the stuff he’s been able to get off the ground so quickly.” Head coach DeShaun Foster of the UCLA Bruins at the Rose Bowl on April 27.