Solar

This may be our year to win the Joe Moore Award, not to mention the Rimington award. BTW Pickard is still our #2 center, but he seems better this year.

I meant what I said, Montana State is probably a better team than the next 3 teams on our schedule. Maybe not in talent, but on the whole, a better team. Maybe Cooper Perry deserves his own thread this week. Some of the statements made by Dan Lanning to date about him were so strong, they were difficult to take seriously, but Perry may be that good. One of those slot receivers that can get open at will, and never drops the ball, and has some wiggle after the catch. If you absolutely have to have 3-7 yards in 1 down, he's the guy to do it. The route tree has improved. It's doing a better job at intentionally winning the numbers game to get specific receivers open in specific areas of the field. I think Douglas has contributed to that. How about the double reverse flea flicker field side screen pass play? I've never seen that before, but it's brilliant. I wish we'd saved it for Penn State. The one thing we are missing on the DL line is a Jamari Cardwell type NT that can't be moved off the ball. I'm not sure our run defense is better this year. There times when the OSU OL were road grading us. I'm sure there were some schematic reasons for those plays, but I'm nervous about the Penn State and Miami's of the world. At least our DL sees something similar in practice every day.

I live in San Diego now and was watching the high school football players running around. For those that don't know August is the only time of year it gets truly hot and humid, yuk. And with pads and a helmet, I don't know how they can see with all the sweat running down into their eyes. I can imagine the Southeast being way worse is NOT a fun place to play football.

Oregon, 63-13 3 t/o 5 sacks 360 passing yards They are going to blitz us and we will throw the ball over them. Lots of explosive plays whether deep throws or yac dump offs. Explosive plays lead to quicker drives, and more opportunities to score. And if there are a lot of turnovers that shortens drives even more. I'm not a betting man, but if I were, betting the over would be like stealing candy from a baby.

I've watched the condensed Oregon State and Washington State season openers, and really was surprised just how far down they've gone in one season. IDAHO looked bigger, stronger, faster and more skilled than WSU. The only reason Idaho lost was from shooting themselves in the foot over and over with stupid penalties and fumbles. OSU just looked untalented and inept against Cal that looked same as they have for the last few years minus Jayden Ott. OSU and WSU have gone from P5 competitors to mediocre G5 teams in a year and a half. The PAC whatever absolutely will be a G5 team across the board. The only resemblance it will have to the former PAC12 is it will be league of parity.

Here's the take from the OSU faithful. https://pokesreport.com/s/7854/a-shot-across-oregons-bow-and-a-wake-up-call-for-oklahoma-state

Great, now make the post season a recruiting quiet period and put the only signing day on January 2nd too. I'm not a fan our staff recruiting when they should be game planning in the post season.

My reading between the lines is he is being competed for RB2 like ever back on the roster not not named Whittington. He didn't get his share of touches due to circumstances. I think the desire to keep D Moore healthy against a high blitz defense will change RB playing time this next game. I hear Mahki is the best pass blocker on the team. So I expect to see him a lot in the first half, or until Moore is done for the day.

Great article and comments. Certainly there will be an endowment of some kind to continue supporting Oregon's athletic program. Certainly being a premier team in the "consolidation of power" era will ensure that the best level set funding provided by the conferences will be as good as anywhere. My question is what happens to the level of Nike involvement, dare I say integration with our athletics program? Will we continue to be used as proving grounds for the state of the art by Nike? Will they continue to be involved in NIL and use players as an employee pipeline? I would like to think enough history is there that the status quo continues to be the path forward as a mutually beneficial arrangement, at least until some hotshot CEO decides to move Nike headquarters to some low cost southern state.. Some of it depends on what happens to the 20% voting shares of PK. Is it sold or just administrated as part of the estate.

So we live rent free in the USC players heads too, not just their fans.

I doubt Cristobal is going anywhere. He's home. I want to say the same for Dilly, but he would have to be tempted by the salary and potential prestige if he's confident enough in himself. Maybe Cig? Bama has to let the ugliness play out a while. If you fire a 9 and 4 coach, who the heck is going to want that job? Only someone hungry for the extra millions. It would have to be an up and comer, not some already established elite coach.

QBs don't target WRs they don't trust. They don't trust them to be open, run the right route, or catch the ball. Sometimes maybe it's lack familiarity, not building that trust in the off season and camps. Partly why I was so excited about Malik is how frequently Moore was willing to send the ball his way in the first game. Moore trusts what he is capable of. I do expect it to carry over to this Saturday, and if it does, we'll all notice because I expect Moore to air it out if our OL can buy a little time against the rush.

The infamy of the "Texas is BACK!" call was when they beat ND in the 1st game of the season. It turned later that both teams sucked. 1 data point doesn't make a trend. We'll just have to see a few more games to even begin to have an idea of how good these first wins and losses really are. That's why I'm fine with the rankings right, because as long as they are in the ballpark of reasonableness they did fine.

Washington is my #1. No DT should have that many tackles and that much time spent in the backfield. He wrecked the run game for the #1 rushing team in all of college football.

Bizarrely, I have zero issues with this list. I think they got it pretty much right.

It's Tuesday! I've been making the same mistake all morning.

ROC boys on YouTube commented how Montana State deliberately played a defensive scheme to limit explosive plays (nothing over the top). Oklahoma State with Todd Grantham as DC is extremely aggressive with pressure (remember the ASU teams that brought the house every play?) So this will be great to see how Dante handles pressure as well as how he, Dakorien Moore, Sadiq, and Benson can take the top off a defense. We'll probably see a lot more Mahki Hughes since he is the best pass rush blocking RB.

Maybe he thought Bryant was gonna make the 1st guy, who was late coming over, miss, so blocking the second guy was clearing the path for the touchdown. One of those cases where the player ends up being right even though it wasn't how the coach drew it up. Don't get me wrong; against Penn State I definitely want Moore to block the first guy in that exact situation.

The ND true freshman QB started getting more comfortable later in the game and the offense started to open up a bit. I recall us with MC as head coach beating OSU when they had a true freshman QB in the first game of the season...Not sure we would have beat them later in the season even if MC didn't have one foot out the door.

I'm just a simple design engineer worrying about space. Moving the ball past the point it's snapped requires some kind of path somewhere. Putting 22 people in a space the size of a classroom and trying to move the ball forward 5 to 10 feet is a pretty tall ask. Like you guys are saying, if perfectly executed and the defense guesses wrong it will work 100% of the time. So if it is a true coin flip (based on the defense' guess) and you have 3 downs to pull it off then odds are it will work. And it definitely sets up well for a sequence play of the outside blocker releasing into the flat for a pass. Just don't run it on 4th and 1 in a frenzy and I won't complain anymore.

Yikes. Maybe they'll get it sorted out later. Everyone keeps saying that on paper Alabama is the most talented team in the country. That points at a coaching problem, but... Perhaps their 5 star freshman QB can get up to speed soon and take over for Simpson and be a Penix like miracle worker. Perhaps the Grubb offensive scheme is a big adjustment for the players to get used to. And FSU was really balling. It's still really early to completely write Alabama off.

Great article, lot's to be excited about. I think MSU was probably better than Northwestern and little bro U are. We're going to be a problem in the B1G again this year. I wasn't crazy about the shotgun full house formation. It's like trying to clog 2 more players through the same pipe and compacts the defense over center even more, and it takes longer for the exchange to happen while the DEs and DBs crash down like a pistol run. I'm not a fan. You'd be better off removing the QB with a wildcat snap and putting a WR way outside to pull away one defender. I remember Taggart running something similar based on the same premise of having all these good backs so get them on the field at the same time. It wasn't worth more than a shoulder shrug and I think it faded as the season progressed.

He ran a 10.4 in high school. I think game breaking would be a matter of route selection. Now that he has leaned out, bring on the double moves. He will likely be every bit as dangerous as Evan Stewart which is the point of this thread. Thoughts of concern about not being able to replace Evan Stewarts ability and production have been addressed by Malik Benson's development. I'm projecting a little bit, but I'm trusting my eyes here. I'm excited about our ceiling in the passing game.

I think there is a reason the QBs don't throw Kasper's way very often. He struggles to finish. Routes, catches and run after the catch. It's great he's so tall, but the downside of that is I don't think he has the coordination and balance required to be a great receiver. His target to completion ratio including spring games has to be the worst I have ever seen. That being said, I hope he does well when he plays, unlike the rest of his career at Oregon to date.

We really need a solid 3rd option at receiver in addition to Bryant and Moore. Instead we got an elite receiver, Malik Benson. Yes, elite. He was merely good with an elite ceiling arriving at Oregon in the spring, and he is now elite. The size, the speed, and now the agility, having looked like losing 10-15 pounds of baby fat since the spring game. Ross Douglas has also clearly been helping him in the other facets of his game, running crisp routes and positioning himself well relative to defenders. Moore has clearly recognized this, by targeting him more than any other receiver. It is just a sample size of one game, half a game really, and maybe he gets cases of the dropsies, and plays uninspired for stretches of games, but if he doesn't, look out, he will be as good or better than Troy Franklin. I'm really excited about him.