kirklandduck

I don't know if panic attacks and strokes are that entertaining.... 😓

Not enough evidence yet for me to make any sort of confident prediction, optimistic or otherwise. Could they finish a 1 loss team? Yes. Could they finish a 3 loss team? Yes.

It was certainly an interesting game, the last few minutes of which were far more interesting than I wanted it to be. At this rate I might have an aneurism by the end of the season 😝 My own personal thoughts about how Oregon performed after re-watching the game: Offense AB had a much better passing game this time around, the best so far this season. His sweet spot seems to be that mid-range between 15 and 30 yards, he just doesn't have the accuracy for anything more than that. Mid-range passes are more than enough in Moorhead's RPO schemes. Devon Williams has started to come into his own and in my opinion should be the first option on passes. He has good chemistry with AB and can help alleviate some of AB's accuracy issues with that wingspan of his. That last interception against UCLA probably would have been a TD had AB thrown the ball higher and let Devon use his size and athleticism to bring it down. Even though Dye had a low rush yardage stat, so far as RB1 he's proving to be a tough and dynamic runner worthy of getting onto an NFL roster. I think by the end of the season he'll make a case to get drafted in the later rounds or at least get on as an undrafted agent. He reminds me of Kenyon Barner. Ryan Walk is an unsung hero. It was already impressive enough that he's a starter as a walk-on but taking over center and doing it as competently as he has the last couple games? He needs more credit for this. Kris Hutson needs to secure the darn ball. This is the 2nd game in a row that he had it stripped from him because he only had 1 arm on it in traffic. I hope Coach McClendon tells him his playing time is in jeopardy if he doesn't shape up. Defense Stating the obvious: KT is a real-life cookie monster. He constantly claws apart the opposing line and gobbles up QBs and RBs like they're freaking cookies. As long as he stays healthy he's a shoo-in for DPOY. Defensive as a whole is very effective when healthy and KT is up front. DBs overall doing a better job in the bend-not-break defense. Mid-field coverage is the one big ugly spot. There were multiple times when UCLA converted to get 1st down by running a TE to the middle of the field for a 10+ yard pass, at one point they had 3 3rd down conversions in a row with this same play. I was going to mention it here but the venerable Mike West beat me to it. Each time the LBs and DBs were caught staring at the QB and not their surroundings. Steve Stephens finally figured it out and broke up the 4th attempt at this play. Special Teams A blocked punt should never happen....ever. Side note: While it's early to look ahead to next season, one can't help but wonder how effective the defensive line will be when KT moves on. The others are largely productive because of the opportunities KT creates because of the amount of attention he commands from opposing offenses. Will Oregon recruit a suitable replacement (maybe Cyrus Moss)? Or if Justin Flowe is healthy next season, does Coach DeRuyter modify his schemes to make him and Noah the focal point of the defense?

Flash back to terrible throwing. I don't know who AB was aiming for on that one.

I think it may come down to the QBs. DTR and QB are very similar in skillset and habits. If AB puts up average numbers (225+ yards passing and 2+ total TDs) then Oregon has a good shot at winning.

They definitely have a stronger rushing game this year than the the last couple years, that's for sure. As for the individual backs, CJ is obviously the stouter of the two but I have to definitely say Dye is the more dynamic runner. Watching in against Cal, he seems to be better than CJ at field awareness which allows him to pick up extra yards. I was also impressed at a couple of his runs where he was basically dragging more than one defender for 6, 7, or 8 yards.

It sounds like he's stuck. Of course he doesn't want to bad-mouth his own starting QB and destroy any confidence further but I'm sure he knows more than anyone on that team that something has to give eventually.

9-4, 29 points per game, 21 points allowed per game.

That makes Oregon at its healthiest state since the beginning of the season. It's unfortunate that Flowe is out for the year, he really needed that game time experience alongside Sewell to make that super-duo for next season when KT leaves.

Whatever your personal feelings about his stance on the vaccine, at the very least it's no longer a distraction for WSU's football program.

Given the Jekyll and Hyde nature of the offense it's just impossible to make any sort of semi-accurate prediction, plus the dark mood probably skews any predictions artificially downward in some regard. Oregon could finish anywhere from the Rose Bowl to the Sun Bowl...

DTR is basically a younger version of AB who sees the field a bit better.

Neither did I. In fact if they had played Stanford again instead of Cal yesterday, Oregon would have lost again.

Man I just read about this online. Apparently it's been a long time coming due to his pre-existing ailment related to that right leg and compounded when he fractured it a couple years ago. Thankfully it sounds like the surgery went as well as it could have.

It seems to show a complete lack of awareness of how bad the offense is really playing. In all the years I've watched Oregon football I can't recall a time when fans booed their own players in Autzen. As a side note, I wish the coaches would instantly bench a player for the game if they start jawing as opponents after a play. We've seen way too much of that this season and its contributed greatly to the huge number of penalties happening.

Isn't taking a snap under center and taking a knee something you learn in pee wee league? I couldn't understand why they took it in the shotgun in the middle of the end zone...what the....?

We learned that AB can make passes when he's pushed to do so. It was only after the fans started booing him that he started to play better. I have no problem with him throwing in the low 200's for passing yards as long as it's consistently moving the offense forward, which it hasn't. If AB and the offense played the entire game like they played that last 9 minutes then they would have scored over 40. There needs to be a sense of urgency instilled in the offense and we've only seen it sparingly so far.

True, though teams seem to always take their best shot at Oregon and Cal certainly did. But you did see the six point Cal offense in flashes throughout the game as they had penalty after penalty (a lot of holding calls against that OL struggling to contain KT).

Defense is what saved the game for Oregon. The offense as it stands will not make it through the rest of the schedule without at least 2 or 3 losses. AB did some nice things but overall was extremely inconsistent and indecisive, two things a 6th year senior should not be at this point.

Why does the offense finally wake up with less than 9 minutes left? Why can’t they show that kind of urgency from the get-go?

Defense is doing enough, offense is constantly shooting itself in the foot.

I don't think so either, he hasn't looked anything like before his ankle injury. If it's a high ankle sprain that he suffered then that's probably the issue, those take anywhere from 6 weeks to 3 months to fully recover from.

We now know why the SEC favored the 12 team format, they had already known Texas/Oklahoma were coming to their conference to improve their odds of making the playoffs so getting those bye games is swung in their favor. It has to be an 8 or 16 game format.

USC could do worse. Leavitt's always been a solid coach with a good record of success, defense is always elevated when he comes on board. He's a decent recruiter, he brought in some blue chips to Oregon when he was here but if he were hired as USC then he'd probably want to hold onto Donte Williams and have him run the recruiting program. Then hire on a good OC and then USC is back on stable ground to work up from.

The depth chart just released for Call shows Benson as the #2 RB, so it might be that Cristobal is going with sort of a "thunder and lightning" setup with them as the duo.