Solar

This is the first year we've lost any players to the portal that will actually affect us negatively next year in the 2 deep, and it's quite a few: Purchase, Porter, Lopa, Austin, Harris, Gray, Green, Jericho Johnson (he was going to pass Gray and Green with another year). About half can be replaced in the portal, but the rest will be loss of quality depth.

The biggest tell that people making the rankings severe cognitive bias issues is Penn State and Indiana. 3rd vs. 20th. Really? Indiana had as good of a regular season record as Penn State and returned every bit as much production outside of QB. And Penn State had the QB that had the most to prove on a production basis not Mendoza. Narratives and cognitive biases are no way to set a baseline for how good your wins are in the next season. At least in the future 16-24 team playoff it will be nearly impossible to leave out an actual contender due to this issue.

It also means injuries are going to be more impactful, conditioning is going to matter more and wearing down the defense running the ball in the 4th quarter is going to be a thing again.

Tosh Lupoi leaving is a contributor as is a bunch of "were expected to go to the NFL but didn't" guys. The 2nd stringers don't want to wait another year to be 1st string that they weren't planning on. Here's the thing about NIL. It's just like the job market. That one company out there that really needs to hire someone is always willing to pay more than the current employer. These 2nd stringers leaving the Oregon and Ohio States of the world will be much better compensated as the main person of need on a team in the top 10-20. We are witnessing in real time the dilution of talent from the top couple of teams redistributing to the remainder of playoff contenders. The greater the playoff field size the more spread out the talent will be as more NIL Boosters see they ROI of being able to make the playoff field with a chance to win it all. No more NFL caliber talent sitting 3rd string on the bench at Bama. Those days are over and it's for the better of the sport.

We need to get Seaton so bad. We'll be totally set on offense if we do. LB is gonna be a big weakness unless we can tamper, I mean convince some great ones to enter the 2nd portal window. DL has serious depth issues. The entire 2nd string left. Gone. Not sure how replace it, but if we don't, we'll get worn down and see big drop offs when the starters need a break.

It's amazing fans still haven't learned: if you build it, they will come. The more playoff spots the more competitive teams there are, the more the talent spreads out. NIL and the ROI is the mechanism that enables it. With the 4 team playoff only 3 teams truly had a chance to win it all. With the 12 team playoff roughly 8 truly have a shot. If you go to 16 teams, you will have 10-12 teams that could challenge for a title. if you have 24 teams you'll eventually get 15 teams that could challenge for a title any given year. Would that be exciting? Why do we have a top 25 to be ranked, to be relevant? Let's make it 24 and align it with the playoffs. It'll be great for the sport.

I read the article, there isn't any smoke to him not coming to Oregon. What the article is describing as messy is the breakup with Minnesota. He's a Duck that needs a little mental refocusing like Bear had, to get back on his game.

These special teams players all ran out of eligibility this year: K Atticus Sappington LS Luke Basso P James Ferguson-Reynolds K Andrew Boyle P Ross James

Benson was everything I hoped he would be after seeing his first real game with us. I'm not sure Stewart really would go have produced any better than Benson did. I really hope he played his way into the middle of the draft.

Seeing Tulane's defense under Hampton, I think he is an upgrade over Lupoi. Mehringer has way more to prove. Rutgers offense sucked when he was OC, but he was young and it was Rutgers.

Excellent post by Mike. I can tell by some of the responses it's gonna be a loooooong off-season. I'm arguably wiser than Dan Lanning. I'm inarguably 10 years older than him too. Stay the course with DL. He'll get there. He learns the hard way like most guys do, but he learns. Cristobal never learned anything while he was here. He looks like a drugged up spectator on the sidelines for Miami. I don't know what the boosters did to him to get him to let go of the offense and turn over clock management to someone else, but it worked. DL already has that figured out at least. We can't forget the extra level of difficulty with our distant proximity to talent that he is overcoming. I always say gratefulness is the art of lowering your standards. Aim high, but be happy where you end up. The only other option is a laundry list of bad emotions. Life's too short.

This is my thought too. I was highly critical of Moore though the season, but he did show improvement over UCLA and earlier in the year. Seeing Bo:s improvement in his second Oregon season was impressive. I'm hoping for the same amount of improvement. Not saying he will play like Bo. He will make more mistakes and bigger plays than Bo did. It will be interesting to see what changes our new OC makes despite the same returning QB.

DL has already made his choice. Of all the decisions DL has ever made I'm most nervous about his decision to promote from within for both coordinators. No need to take risks with unproven coordinators. Find proven performers anywhere in the country that did a lot with a little. We don't need continuity. We need the most mentally flexible coaches to adapt and scheme for the players we have each and every year, not the players we wish we had or used to have.

My understanding is today is the last day to declare for the draft. Let's see what the rest of the day brings.

We just have to wait until Moore announces and Raiola responds to see where this is truly headed.

Also Nebraska offense turned off like a light switch for the remainder of the season once Raiola went down. That's a good sign of his ability to play winning football.

Per the playoff discussions ongoing the Pac12 is going to be considered a group conference not a power conference. OSU and WSU disemboweled the Mountain West for nothing. Great job dudes. ESPN.comCFB buzz: What we're hearing about playoff expansion, con...Multiple playoff scenarios are on the table ahead of critical meetings this week.

Raiola was the 3rd highest QB recruit as a freshman, and improved noticeably this year despite being behind a poor OL. He's got multiple years left to build on his skills. It did take a long time to get him signed. If it was because he was waiting for Moore to decide to go to the NFL, I would expect to hear that announcement very soon.

What's wrong with Owls? Signed- Oregon Tech Hustlin' Owls alumni P.S I know you're just joking

Imagine how Penn State feels? They got jumped by us and we laughed at them for it, and in reality they were jumped by Indiana too.

We need to find a way to keep Harris. It shouldn't be that hard. He could be RB 2.5 next year with Whittington and Lamar gone. If he wants to be RB1, then not much we can do to keep him, but otherwise, pay the kid and play the kid.

Such great posts in this thread. Thank you. For those that have ever been part of a losing team you can remember the joy there is in winning. Being able to enjoy winning over 90% of the time is a great situation to be in. For those like me that wanted a playoff we have to keep in mind what that means. Every team in the playoffs finishes with a loss except the champions. 11 of the top 12 teams in the country finished their season with a disappointing loss. Yeah the way we lost was a result of shooting ourselves in the foot, but we still lost to the better team. Junior high teams don't beat high school teams because of the physical and mental differences that come with human development. Keep in mind the brain doesn't finish development until roughly age 26. And the experience gained in any activity is invaluable to development. A 3 year age and experience gap is massive even at age 20ish. Even physical development can still be huge at that age. Then you add in the experience level of IU coaches, and the fact that most of the players had been been in that same system with those coaches for their college career back to JMU and it's just a massive advantage that won't persist.

I agree with the title of this thread. What I saw: Moore is a QB that doesn't have a natural aptitude for real time situational awareness of everything going on around him. He's made great strides, but against the best teams' defenses he's got a long ways to go. We wouldn't have been any better on offense if we had Whittington and Davison. Harris produced every bit as much as they would have. He played so good somebody is going to pay the man next year whether it's us or some other team. Our offensive line continued to play very very slow. Seemingly always getting beat to the block point by the defender. Maybe injuries, maybe just too big and a bad fit for a system that requires a lot of agility from the blockers. Our defense played really, really well. We shut down their run game on 1st and second down forcing 14 3rd down with the majority 3rd and long. And our 2 best cornerbacks and nickel played elite level coverage. How did they play so well despite getting over 50 points scored on them??? There is no defense for the perfect pass and Mendoza threw about 15 of them. What are you going to do except tip your cap to him? We gifted them 3 scores straight up and a fourth they took away and had to drive less than 30 yards to the endzone, totalling 28 points. That's about how much we lost by right? If we played mistake free football we would have had a chance against a generational level team, just like we thought...but it simply wasn't realistic to expect that. If there is one thing this team was consistent about all year was leaving a lot of meat on the bone due to mistakes. It's obviously easy to look at the final scores of the Rose Bowl and Peach bowl and call it a pattern, but that's crazy levels of intellectual laziness. We were obliterated for completely different sets of reasons. This playoff Dan Lanning resolved the issues that caused us to be blown out in the Rose Bowl. He now has a new set of lessons to learn and solve for next year.

I guess I wasn't be honest with myself. This loss really bothered me. I was willing to take the L with a smile if we were competitive, but we gifted them 28 points. It's hard not to let that piss you off.

There is a saying, "Old age and treachery beats youth and ambition every time."