Solar

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."

I agree with you fwiw. People are upset right now and rightfully so. In a game where we couldn't make mistakes, we made the biggest mistakes of the season. Coach Cig won't have a roster full of seniors his staff has been coaching for the last five years forever.

It means the TEs give a good hard shove to the DE before heading out on their route. It makes the LBs think you are blocking for a run and slows down the DEs' rush for half a second.

I said I wouldn't mind losing, but this is no fun to watch. I fear the team has already given up. I'm glad I'm not stuck in the stands with a several thousand dollar travel bill waiting for me when I get home.

Beat me to it!

Are we having fun again? Great drive. OL playing good. Dante Moore poised. Excellent play calling too. Tie game.

It is definitely interesting how every talking head unanimously are picking IU, when the spread is down to -3 for IU, and smart money bettors have been gobbling it up picking Oregon to cover. I guess mere mortals can't conceive of a team that beat Ohio State and beat down Alabama ever losing again.

Definitely a lot of red. Never seen so many bandwagon fans in my life, but that's human nature. It definitely shows how much more prohibitive it is to make fans fly vs drive. I'm just happy it's a late afternoon game with no weather to worry about.

I'm not nervous about the Peach bowl. Not because I don't think we can lose, but because I don't mind if we lose. There are fans for 128 team sitting at home, with their season over. I'm grateful to see our team get to play one more time. If this was basketball, we'd be saying "final four" non stop. I'm grateful that we are the 2nd best rated team in the country by power rankings at the end of the season and in the final four despite having the closest thing to a rebuild we'll ever have in the current era of Dan Lanning, NIL and the portal. We made it one level deeper into the playoffs than last year, which always feels like progress. We are playing with house money at this point, so instead of being nervous and worrying, I'm just going to enjoy watching the game, win or lose.

I think Miss wins. Beck shows his flaws and Chambliss dazzles again despite the pass rush. I'm honestly not sure who I'd want to face in the Natty.

I'll be watching Dante Moore most. He has the highest ceiling and lowest floor against this team.