A walk through the Rose Bowl late Saturday night, with the final two minutes of UCLA’s 17-7 loss to Arizona State winding down, the number of dejected, some even emotionless faces told the story of a fanbase that had seen enough.

While walking through the section 21 tunnel and heading down onto the field for the closing moments, one fan’s voice cut through the silence. The message was clear: “Fire Chip Kelly,” though his attempts at starting a chant were unsuccessful, perhaps because many of the announced 56,436 fans in attendance had already headed for the exits by the time fourth-string quarterback Chase Griffin was called up for the Bruins’ final drive to replace an injured, visibly distraught Collin Schlee.

“We told them it was on us as coaches,” Kelly said. “We didn’t do a good enough job to prepare those guys to play this football game.”

At the halftime whistle, and once more earlier in the fourth quarter, though, that crowd was fed up to the point of cascading boos to let Kelly know what they thought about his playcalling. On three, eerily similar occasions, Bruins transfer running back Carson Steele was stopped on fourth-and-short situations — including one instance on the Arizona State 1-yard line after UCLA had the ball facing first-and-goal from the 5 late in the first half.

“Yeah, it was my decision to go for it and it obviously didn’t work out, so it’s on me,” Kelly said.

The Bruins even got possession back before halftime and Logan Loya’s 31-yard punt return started the offense on the ASU 18 with 3:29 left. Steele was stopped on fourth-and-1 from the 9.