Solar

I think the larger college playoff field is also levelling the field at the top too. Even with NIL options, the risk vs reward for an also ran school to make a 4 team playoff was poor. With 12 teams the numbers start pencilling out for the Texas Tech, Vandy and Indiana of the world to make the investment.

If you have a time machine you go further back in time and don't hire Scott. We still wouldn't end up in as good of a spot as we are for football, but it would be way better for college sports on the whole.

Are we sure he will end up a QB? Maybe a different position would be a better fit. I would hope there is serious evaluation going on for his best potential to contribute.

Novasad was at the game, dressed to play. I think he may still not be completely well and would have only gone in if Moore went down and the game was close. Not sure why Moga didn't play, but Brock has clearly earned the playing time to be out there, and he did good, so good for him.

I was only mildly surprised at our offensive performance, since Rutgers has a horrible defense, especially when it comes to explosive plays. I was extremely surprised how much our defense dominated them, because their offense was supposed to be pretty good. The most surprising thing for me this game was learning from the announcer that Rutgers started in 1766, 10 years before the Declaration of Independence. That's freaking old.

I think they make this happen. It will be harder for Smith to replicate his success at Oregon State with the bad conference though.

Any redemption arc for Penn State is dependent on a functional QB. Unlike UCLA they don't have a 5 star talent they've kept bridled. We'll have to see how good Allar's backup is, before seeing what their new ceiling is.

I'm playing to win here, Oregon 50-16 1 4 268

This. "Complimentary Football" is a 2 way street. Half the reason I thought our defense did so well against Indiana despite their 30 points was because of how many possessions they had that they didn't score either. I believe we kept them to a really respectable points per possession metric, especially for them being Indian that can run up the score at will against most teams.

I think the sports psychology message for this past week fell flat for that reason. Highlighting Secretariat with a 60 furlong lead at the Belmont Stakes had me puzzled. I know it was about the horse's heart being 3 times it's normal size, but it just fell flat with complacency.

A good time for a different, clean look. A clean slate. The stormtrooper look is great with this year's unis.

For those that don't know, Geoff Schwartz is a former duck and was a starting NFL Offensive Lineman for over a decade, so he is as qualified as anyone to study film on offensive line performance and diagnosing where the issues are.

I remember our last regular season loss before this (Washington in 2023). I recall us being the most dominant team in the country the remainder of the regular season afterwards. Hopefully that was a function of the culture that is still in place and we'll see a similar response where Oregon becomes the team "nobody wants to play". P.S. It was a similar situation then of encountering a team with coaches that knew how to beat us, and players motivated enough to pull it off. I'm glad we played IU and lost to their superior coaching and player motivation. It exposed all the flaws of this team so they can be corrected going forward.

I think everything that went wrong last Saturday is pretty obvious to us and the coaching staff from the film, and they will learn and adjust somewhat. IU is really good, but it's clear we are capable of beating them if we learn from the experience. I think some OC at some point is going to remember the reason why nobody uses a 4-3 base set anymore and call the appropriate plays to beat IU's defense.

Good point about the ipads. If anyone is at the games, have you seen the coordinators locked into the ipads when the other side is on the field. Still this only allows adjustment after the series is over. And a screen doesn't have the same impact as watching your play call go down in flames due to X's and O's in real time, seeing it's not going to work as the play develops. Another consideration is audibles and in helmet communication systems. Why wouldn't you take advantage of that as an OC, to get up to the line quickly with a fake snap count and be able to help the QB change the call and protections before the system shuts off 15 seconds before the play clock runs out? It would be interesting if the press were to ask this of the coordinators if there was a possibility they could do their jobs better from the box.

With regards to the O-Line performance, Geoff Schwartz and I disagree with your title and synopsis. Yes it wasn't their best showing, they got some penalties and had a few bad blocks, but they were pretty consistently handling the rusher in front of them. The bigger contributions were everything else, RBs, Moore in more ways than one, and Stein's play calling formations that took a middle of the road approach of not adding extra blockers or not adding extra WR to stress the LBs. Read Geoff Schwartz Twitter post in the other thread.

I read an article that had some decent logic as to why ADs should stop giving such big buyouts, especially when they are already making top of the food chain salaries.

Glass half full here, we've played a role in getting 3 head coaches fired in 6 games. There are fans of teams around the country that wished they could play Oregon this year. Florida is one of them I'm sure.

Your statement about adjustments is half my point. Would Stein really keep running the plays he did in the second half if he was in the box seeing how often his plays were losing the numbers game at the point of attack or in protection? It would have made him throw up in his mouth a bit and feel emotionally compelled to try different things. When at the field level you has some plausible deniability that may be your players are getting beat everywhere and the play calls would work if they just executed better.

Agreed. I just created a new thread on this topic before reading your post. At the same time for Moore, it sure seemed like that Mike Tyson quote: "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face." It was like Dante Moore from UCLA was raised from the dead when he got up from that sack on the first play of the game. I hope he can mature past that going forward.

..led by our scouts and analysts and Caboosed by Will Stein. Rewatching this game it's like the Oregon offense prepared for a completely different team. Our RB's thought they could juke tacklers out of their shoes for extra yards, lead blockers thought our RBs were past the tackers they left untouched, consistently playing a man or two down blocking at the point of attack or in protection. That doesn't happen if the scout team plays a competitive representation of the opposing team's defense. It's like we were expecting them to run a 3-4 defensive scheme with players as talented as Oregon State, and instead we got a team full of ballers running a 4-3 front that the stunted, simulated pressures and dropped back in coverage based on the predictable looks we gave them.consistently. At some point Lanning and the coordinators needs to evaluate their scouting methodologies. Does he need to find better scouts, does he need to listen to his scouts better, does the scout team need to better understand how vital their role is in preparing the starters? Our last two losses can be pinned at least 50% on significant schematic and preparation failures. I use to think it was because our coaches were busy recruiting instead of scheming, but I don't think that was the case here. Something else is going on here

If your job is "Xs and Os" how can you do it at the field level, you know? Nobody ever schemes on a white board or tablet from a sideline view. They spent a lot of money building boxes high in the sky for a reason. I just can't fathom the advantage of being on the sidelines outweighing the bird's eye view. 🤷

It's time for Franklin to become a college football commentator. It is extreme to fire this winning of a coach (heck, he's still .500 for the season!), with such a large buyout without having a plan in place. Tinfoil hat says they got a handshake from Cignetti's agent in a dark alley Sunday night, and I'm only half joking.

I'm still in the room for Dante Moore leading this team, but I have 1 foot out the door. Why did UCLA Moore show up again? Was this the first time he's seen the same scenarios that he failed with at UCLA? Receivers not wide open, zone coverage, less than 5 seconds to throw? What was it exactly? It's like good Bo, bad Bo, the Dante Moore version. The good news is the University of Oregon, it's fans and Stein were able to support Bo to be good Bo nearly all of the time, but the bad news is bad Bo still cost us a playoff spot against Washington in the Pac12 Champ game.. It's a fine line between success and failure. I stand by my comments that Dante was the primary reason we lost this game, but he's our starting QB and has shown some growth. I certainly have hope he can learn to play better under these adverse conditions we are guaranteed to see in the playoffs.

I think they called Cig not Lanning. Or maybe they are going to save a buck by hiring away the UCLA staff mid season.