Jerry Neuheisel and his mentor Noel Mazzone come together to launch the University of California

They are calling their favorite voice audibly again.

One quarterback coach calls another and asks for help creating a dynamic attack.

The answer is always yes. The results say as much about Jerry Neuheisel and Noel Mazzone’s dedication to each other as they do about their ability to produce yards and points in droves for UCLA.

“No matter what happens, as long as you’re around him you’ll have a smile on your face,” Neuheisel said in an interview with The Times.

The last call came from the long-time apprentice to his mentor.

With the Bruins off to an 0-4 start, Neuheisel spoke with Mazzone about the possibility of returning to Westwood to help with the offense. Just as he routinely did when he was UCLA’s offensive coordinator a decade ago, Mazzone gained the wits about him, knowing Neuheisel would be promoted from hard-nosed coach to play-caller before Neuheisel did.

“I think he was in the car the next morning and he was here that evening, trying to beat Penn State,” Neuheisel said.

They did so by defeating Penn State, reviving an offense and a team that became the talk of college football. UCLA’s average of 40 points in its two wins has nearly tripled its previous output during that winless start, bringing to mind the offense the Bruins ran under Mazzone with Neuheisel as their backup quarterback from 2012-15.

That was just the beginning of a winning combination.

Shortly after they parted ways at the end of their four seasons together at Westwood, Mazzone reached out to Neuheisel, convincing him to give up playing for Japan’s X League’s Obic Seagulls so he could help Mazzone in 2017 during his second season as Texas A&M’s offensive coordinator.

“When he called me and said, ‘We’re going to the SEC, we’re going to College Station, Texas,’ I didn’t even ask questions. I got the next flight home,” said Neuheisel, who had long known he wanted to be a coach.

After making the 22-hour drive from Los Angeles to College Station, Neuheisel stayed in a hotel for a week and a half while looking for a place to live — although he was never officially hired.

All that matters is that he returns to his teacher. Now they were together again, only the roles were reversed.

“It’s the first time in my life he’s actually listened to all my ideas, so I had fun turning the tables,” Neuheisel said with a laugh.

Just a few weeks ago, Mazzone reconnected with two former UCLA quarterbacks.

He gathered with Brett Hundley and Mike Favol in the Phoenix area to watch some football the weekend UCLA lost to Northwestern to fall to 0-4, and Mazzone and his former players told Newheisel they were thinking about him.

“They sent a picture from the bar watching us play,” Neuheisel said.

What they didn’t tell him was that they were already considering the possibilities of the 68-year-old Mazzone, who was then the offensive coordinator at Saguaro High School in Scottsdale, Arizona.

“At the time, we weren’t doing well, so we were joking that Mazzone might go back to UCLA,” Hundley said of the Bruins.

A lifelong coach, Mazzone had made more than 20 stops at the high school, college and NFL levels by the time he agreed to get in his car and return for his second stint with the Bruins after the team traded late offensive coordinator Tino Sunseri to New Heisel.

Several days later, after hasty preparations and some blunders in its Playcalling debut such as Neuheisel fumbling with the button on his headset that allowed him to talk to his quarterback, UCLA scored on each of its first five drives en route to a 42-37 win over then-No. 7 Penn State qualifies as the surprise hit of the college football season.

The jubilant players lifted Newheisel on their shoulders in a scene reminiscent of his greatest moments with Mazzone and coach Jim Mora, when he came on as a substitute to lead the team to victory over Texas in 2014.

About a half-hour after his win over the Nittany Lions, his hair still wet with water players had sprayed into the air of the locker room, Neuheisel revealed what it means to share this new memory with one of his favorite teachers.

“Having Coach Mazzone here has honestly been one of the coolest things ever,” Neuheisel said. “To have him help in midfield, and to have us be able to exchange ideas with him, it’s great. Great.”

In some ways, circumstances weren’t much different when they met.

Neuheisel was the new guy, just trying to prove himself.

In the fall of 2012, he was a freshman quarterback, and he wanted to show he belonged on the same campus where his father, Rick, had been fired as head coach just a few months earlier. Mazzone was also a newcomer after being named part of Mora’s first team at UCLA.

“Jerry would come in and you’d have Kevin Prince and Brett Hundley and Richard Brehaut — I mean he’d walk into the quarterback room with some studs,” recalls Jonathan Franklin, the running back who would become UCLA’s top running back by the end of that season. “All three had played before, and Brett Hundley was clearly a rock star.”

It was a unique kind of push on a legacy born at UCLA Medical Center during the time his father was a Bruins assistant coach, having starred at his alma mater as a Rose Bowl-winning quarterback.

“I was just out there trying to make the team,” Neuheisel said.

What quickly became clear given his intrinsic intelligence and inquisitive nature was that his long-term future was likely on the sidelines.

“Jerry, for sure, you could always tell he was going to be a coach from day one,” Hundley said. “It was like Pops 2.0.”

Equally impressive was the smart offensive coordinator who was quick to mock and answer any challenge the defense might present. Mazzone ran an offense that was short on plays and long on odds. He would explain why certain plays worked in certain situations and make sure that even the quarterback understood the blocking schemes so everyone appreciated each other’s roles.

“It’s pretty much you put your best players in space and you make a play,” Franklin said of the prevailing philosophy. “I remember he was calling the plays, and he was like, ‘Man, one guy doesn’t have to come at you, so we’re not going to block this guy — that’s between you and him, you have to make it happen.’”

UCLA won 29 games in its first three seasons with Mazzone running the offense and Neuheisel playing a backup role, except for the September day in 2014 when he got the megawatt spotlight.

With Hundley sidelined with an elbow injury against the Texans, Neuheisel came off the bench and threw a 33-yard touchdown pass to Jordan Payton with three minutes left, ralliing the Bruins to a 20-17 victory. His teammates lifted him into the air and carried him off the field.

“I mean it’s unbelievable,” Mazzone said after the game. “Jerry came out and handled the situation better than anyone. I mean he did a really great job. I’m really proud of him.”

When he called a reporter after 8 p.m. Wednesday, Neuheisel had not finished his work for the day. It was just a temporary respite from reviewing the game video, and he only had several hours left before he could finally go home.

His schedule has gotten so crazy since his promotion that Hudson Habermehl recently received a phone call from Neuheisel’s wife, Nicole, asking him to take an Uber Eats delivery order upstairs to Neuheisel’s office inside the training facility.

Habermehl was happy to do so, a small gesture of thanks to the 33-year-old coach who has done so much for him and an offense that bears no resemblance to the one from earlier this season despite the Bruins running essentially the same plays.

If this sounds like Mazzone’s murder, that’s no coincidence.

“What made Noel’s offense so great and why I loved it was that there was exploitation of space on the field, and I would say that’s what we were trying to emulate is trying to create space on the field and trying to create matchups for our players to have success,” Neuheisel said.

No one has benefited more than quarterback Niko Emaleva, who has thrown five TDs and no interceptions over the past two weeks while adding three rushing TDs. The previously dormant running game has gained significant speed, averaging 253.5 yards in wins over Penn State and Michigan State.

“There seems to be a new energy on offense,” Hundley said. “You know, it’s not like they got 11 completely new starting players. I mean they’re the same guys we were talking about at the beginning of the season, but now they’re putting Nico in a position to play.”

Habermehl said everyone played freely and instinctively because Neuheisel explained the reason for each play and involved all position groups in offensive meetings to provide a global understanding of the concepts.

“When you coach players, you need to let them see why,” Neuheisel said. I think that’s what I always appreciated when I was a player here and any good team I was part of.

Neuheisel’s recent success will likely land him a permanent offensive coordinator job, if not a head coaching opportunity, next season. His old friend is probably expecting a phone call asking if he would like to be part of this staff, the answer is known.

“Wherever the ball is, he’ll always find his way there,” Neuheisel said.