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To me, this just highlights why the TV networks will want to push the G5 schools out the playoffs or limit them to one spot max sooner rather than later.

Oregon gets massive news with surprise return announcementIn a surprise announcement yesterday Iapani "Poncho" Laloulu, the Ducks' two-year starter at center, declared he's coming back for his senior season with the team. That makes two key leaders on the 2025 squad who have announced they're passing up the NFL draft for another season of college football. Defensive tackle Bear Alexander announced just last week. Via Instagram, the Rimington Award finalist and third team AP All-American said, "First and foremost I want to thank my Heavenly Father in my lord and savior Gosh crap ... Thank you to my family and friends for your support, love and encouragement, but after a lot of prayer and talks with my family I would like to say that I will be returning back to EUGENE for my last season!" It could be the start of a groundswell for the 2026 squad. Laloulu is close with quarterback Dante Moore, who faces a similar decision before the January 15th deadline. Teitum Tuioti, Kenyon Sadiq, Matayo Uiagalelei, Dillon Thieneman, A'Mauri Washington and tight end Jamari Johnson are also draft eligible with pending announcements. Getting back a handful of these team leaders would be massive, and so far the Ducks are 2-2. Autzen ZooOregon gets massive news with surprise return announcementIn a surprise announcement yesterday Iapani "Poncho" Laloulu, the Ducks' two-year starter at center, declared he's coming back for his senior season.

Yeah. Agree. It hurts Notre Dame a lot more than USC.

Notre Lame should be dumped by every power 4 team! They believe "touchdown Gosh" getting an automatic playoff birth, if they are ranked in the top 12/13 over other teams that deserve to be in??! WTFE!!! I personally have hated seeing their garbage in a bowl game, even with a losing season, because they are "Notre Dame" just to be trounced by every team?! If I never see the Lame Os on TV I will celebrate that year!! What a bunch of overhyped, self-promoting piles. Worse than SUC and and the SEC combined!! Please, please, please B1G, ACC, and SEC take the Lame Os off every schedule! I would say the Big12 too but they already jumped at the chance to give the Lame Os a game!! If the Lame Os only play the "state" schools (PAC-Barfs), they will never be ranked in the top 50!!

NFL viewership during Ole Miss and Oregon games: In the opening contest, 15.46 million people watched the Eagles take hold of the NFC East crown against divisional rival Washington, a game that was close until it wasn’t. At night, it was more of the same: a whopping 21.34 million watched the Bears take down the Packers in one of the more entertaining regular-season games of the year. Caleb Williams and company came back in the final minutes, aided by an onside kick, to push the game into overtime before throwing a deep shot into the endzone for a dramatic walk-off victory. Both NFL games aired on Fox during the college broadcasts on TNT.

It could happen. The stage will be huge, and the players should be ready to roll, as opposed to the possible shoulder shrugging and feigned intensity that might have occurred last weekend. But, we'll see!!!

Good points, and things that will have the coaching staff getting on the team and motivating them for the next game.

And some of that would be how the opposing teams dials up the offense given the way the game is going, but you're not wrong.

Giving us all flashbacks to the Indiana game. Nooooo!. But, you're right, and the O-line and offensive game planning have to be on to keep the QB from getting rattled. Good ole coaching.

True, but if the Ducks have already peaked, then yikes! I'm optimistically praying that they have not.

Thanks. Credit to JMU in the first half, they were probably playing their best offensive ball of the year ("peaking"), there's a reason they did go 12-1. But, the ducks kept them out of the end zone. But, sure, it's something to look at, for sure.

Well kiss my grits. Ain’t that just wonderful? He’s the glue.

Geez Darren….you read my mind, as I have been thinking about this. How we slowly unfolded the offense over last season, but the long layoff killed that. This year we have not had the complete game yet, and while that is an unpractical expectation versus the No. 4 team…a fan has to dream-right?

I think we are approaching peak offense. If Moore and the receivers perform just as cleanly as they did in the first half against JMU I think we stand a great chance. Yes, Moore had two interceptions. One was a fluke that should have been an incomplete pass but bounced right into the hands of a DB. There was also a collision between the receiver and another defender a few seconds earlier in the play but as it was before the ball was in the air it was not PI. The second was a bad pass that just kinda floated while Moore was pressured. However, Kamari Johnson did fall down which left the lane open for an uncontested interception. I think the decision to go there was the right one for Moore as that seemed like a hot route and Johnson was in isolation. He was bigger than the defender and if he didn't lose his feet he could have either caught the ball and put muscled the receiver for the TD or just deflected the ball for an incompletion. Both happened but I don't think either was super egregious just not ideal.

On defense, we seem to try to take away a teams strength. Our safeties seemed overly aggressive against the JMU run game, and that was what allowed some big chunk plays. It really seems that our defense plays well when DM struggles, and when DM plays well our defense seems to struggle. Lupoi needs to call a better game against TT.

This is the area we must improve on, versus trying to play it safe. Of all the team left we get to the qb the least amount. Thats how we got chewed up by Indiana's qb.

IMO, The team that puts the most pressure on the opposing qb, wins it all in this tourney. Yep, defense is the key factor. All teams left can score the ball however, the teams with rattled qb's will sputter big time.

Late in the regular season, these were the eyeball stats for West teams: 8.50Million—Oregon-Penn St (NBC) 5.59M—Oregon-Indiana (CBS) 5.43M - Oregon-USC (CBS) 5.37M—Oregon-Iowa (CBS) 5.23M—Washington-Ohio St (CBS) 4.64M—USC-Notre Dame (NBC) 4.32M—Washington-Michigan (FOX) 4.30M—USC-Michigan (NBC) 4.27M – Oregon-Washington (CBS) Even Ohio St vs Washington was not that much higher than Oregon vs Washington. In comparison to other games, a major factor here is network and kickoff time. These games were heavy to CBS coverage, rather than ABC/ESPN(multi). ABC/ESPN promotes the hell out of their SEC games, has GameDay, has attractive time slots, and a fanbase which loves watching Goober play Cletus.

Can’t say when you peaked until the season is over imo.

Great article. Nice to see that the WSJ still have some excellent writers. While the WSJ is not as good as it used to, I had a political science professor back in the early eighties who was a self-described Marxist -- and a reasonably decent person. We certainly didn't agree on much regarding politics and human nature, but he was actually a fairly rational individual. I once asked him if he could only read one single newspaper, which would it be. His reply actually caught me quite off guard as he said: That's easy... The Wall Street Journal.

Hallelujah! What a fabulous Duck Christmas present. I get praise to the Gawds of College Football for NIL, and of course, Phil and Penny Knight.

Great article, Darren. And yes, I care very little about what our defense allowed in the second half. As you point out, this might actually be what I would call a 'blessing in disguise,' as it gives DL something to get on them about. But I am a bit concerned that in the first half, our defense gave up 189 yards -- while fortunately, only giving up 6 points. JMU had a couple early solid drives, but thankfully our defense quickly stiffened, resulting in JMU ending up with a FG & an INT. I doubt TT would make the same mistakes. And hopefully, JMUs offense is just better than I realize. But speaking to your article title, the bottom line for me is either we peak now, or we likely will be, once again, talking about the season that could have been.

These ratings/viewership numbers makes sense. There's no way the only thing keeping the Oregon/Ole Miss games from ~14M viewers was TNT and an NFL game. Had to look at Oregon's biggest games during the year (I was rather surprised): Oregon v. PSU - 8.5M Oregon v. Indiana - 5.6M (this one is surprising; tosu v. Illinois almost matched this) Oregon v. Iowa - 5.4M Oregon v. USC - 5.4M Oregon v. Washington - 4.3M (this one also blows my mind; see below) Mississippi total population = ~3M ------ Combined Oregon and Washington population = ~12M And the Ole Miss v. Mississippi game got 1M more viewers . . . that's crazy to me. As I've always said, "Fans in the south don't love football more than fans on the west coast. They just have more people that love football in the South than the west coast."

TNT & TruTV.

That's the sign of a highly experienced sports sideline photographer. Chances are quite good that if he tried to avoid Dante, they would have collided. But that takes some serious courage & experience for Gary to believe in his QB, and to stay in the pocket.