Solar

Dunning Kruger effect.. it's a measure of wisdom in it's own way. It's idiotic how the media keeps thinking Lanning is this coaching option for other teams. I mean DeBoer is more likely to leave Bama for something better than Lanning, why don't they throw his name out there instead. On a more realistic note, any Jedd Fisch rumors? That guy has always sounded like a short termer, so maybe this will be the test.if he's interested in a better college HC gig or if he's only really interested in moving on to the NFL. The irony for UW is any strong success whether this season or next, probably means Jedd gets an offer he can't refuse and they start over again with a new coach.

I agree. It isn't enough to have a complete roster, you have to use it. For every counter by the opposing defense you have to be able to recognize it and have a counter of your own. I'll go back to my prior pondering, is why is Stein not up in the box? Has he been under undervaluing the importance of seeing how the defense is attacking his play calling in real time. It's great we adjusted just before halftime, but we'd already thrown away 5 possessions at that point. Someone else mentioned more play-action pass which adds the RB as another blocker up front and creates more space across the middle behind the linebackers. I agree we should do more of that too.

It's a thing in the NFL that you are only as good as your biggest weakness. That applies to players (especially QB's) and schemes. The reason being that opposing coaches are good enough to scout your strengths and take those options away, forcing you to play to your weaknesses. I think this has happened to Stein and Moore this year. Penn State, Indiana, and Wisconsin all doing similar things defensively to take away our strengths. Dante Moore does great with a clean pocket and man coverage? Then bring pressure and play complex zone coverages. Stein likes to use up every blade of grass within 10 yards of the LOS? Run a 4-3 multiple defense that crowds the LOS across the width of the field. The next evolution of our offense is for Stein and Moore to get better at executing to their weaknesses. Moore needs to learn how to deal with real time zone schemes with simulated pressure options and learn how to move in the pocket to buy every last millisecond of time. Stein needs to learn how to create openings up the middle of the field and revise the route trees to create opportunities that materialize quicker for Moore. We've had the luxury of being tested to our weaknesses early in the season. I really hope theses 2 weeks are used to strengthen our weaknesses. If we can have just enough success with our weaknesses (which I believe we have enough talent potential to do) that opponents have start defending them, then that will reopen our strengths.

I'm not panicking, but I'm still worried. A loss to any of the teams left could leave us out of the playoffs. This young team's ability to disappear, primarily the offense, says we could absolutely lose another game. I'm really worried about Iowa. From the announcers for their last game it sounded like their offense is finally figuring some things out. Iowa with a really good offense is immediately a national title contender. Lastly I'm really surprised at all the love for this bye week. They feel more like kryptonite than a blessing lately. Maybe the analysts we have aren't a good fit for Lanning and the coordinators. And if we have to play early that is a recipe for losing a quarter or two before waking up. Minnesota did that and found themselves down 30 points in the first 20 minutes last week against Iowa.

It's Dante that can't beat a zone team, not Will. I do think Stein should be leaning hard into our WR Coach for improvements to make to route trees though.

Couldn't agree more with the article. The idea of Whittington being an every down RB never felt right. He's always been the change of pace back for a reason. Sone compare him to CJ Verdell, but Verdell had more power to drag people and more determination to get North to a fault. Davidson is magic to watch. He's a 230 lb guy with happy feet, the quickest choppiest feet I've ever seen, that allows him to constantly rebalance himself and adjust his lower body's leverage as the play develops, so he is always in a position to burst which ever way opens the most as, well as skinny up his feet to slide through the smallest gaps without getting tripped up. And he does this while staying behind his pads making forward progress though contact. That's what makes him special and the most efficient RB we have.

The difference between play action and rpo is for play action linemen only pass block and the QB has zero intention of handing the ball off.

Thanks. I'm happy to see the adds for once or else the top of my screen would just be a big red Wisconsin behind. Going forward it would be better if the duck player was on the left side of the photo. You could always mirror images to make that happen as well.

Ah yes, the all time leader in interceptions in the state of Alabama that never did much for us. Glad to see he is reaching a higher level on 53 man roster in the NFL.

This. I recall mentioning on this forum that Brock Thomas probably had the best spring game performance. Perhaps he is actually better than everyone other than Moore. It was odd to see Novosad warming up. Maybe he was trying to show the coaches he was ready to go too.

I'm still struggling to figure out if we are really good or really bad on offense. We've been both, especially early in games. We aren't matching the intensity of our opponents early on. Also, i wonder if we have so much variation in the plays we run that the offensive blocking doesn't have the precision to properly block a variety of different looks from defenses. So many of our "custom" play call are getting trashed by missed blocks. Not blocks they lost, I'm talking blocks they could have made, but a defender beat them to he point of attack or ducked in behind them because the blocker thought they didn't need to block them. I think defense is as good as we've had in the Lanning era. Maybe not quite 2019 good, but close.

Iowa up 30 on Minnesota with 11 minutes LEFT in the 2nd QUARTER. Iowa at home and it certainly looks like Minnesota forgot to show up, but we said the same when Indiana destroyed Illinois. Iowa looking like it is the most dangerous game left for us, and oh yeah, it's after our biggest nemesis: a bye week.

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.