Solar

Fun facts: If we reschedule to play the Beavers in 2026, we will play all three OSU schools in a single season. Probably a first and not something we thought we'd ever see. Depending on the playoffs, we could spend a third of our season playing OSU (5 times out of 15 games). It would be fun to beat OSU 5 times in a single season! Haha.

I want to see OSU run for 150 yards or less. I want Gabriel comfortable in the pocket and I want some runs make it untouched to the third level. It seems like a low bar, but if we actually achieve those things we should dominate them.

This is why it's reasonable to attribute their great play to the size of the fight in the dog rather than the size of the dog in the fight. It's dangerous for us. They did pick up some decent talent in the portal.

Given MJ is one of the only effective medical treatments for brain damage I have no issues with it being associated with football.

Finalized next week!? As most speculate this will reinvent the PAC12 a G6 conference. The playoffs arrangement could care less about "Group of #" rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Those teams are who they are. We may still get beat by them on occasion (perhaps in 2 days) but it's just not P2 level ability on average.

To clarify some things, my quote of Mariota was not to say the Ducks should act like Winston, it was to point out very clearly the team had no leadership outburst of anger regarding underperformance or lack of discipline ever. Not good. People don't change until they realize it will hurt worse emotionally to stay the same. That's a high bar sometimes. When people screw up they need to feel really uncomfortable about it to really solidify their desire not to screw up that same way again. Also, sports psychology refers to the emotional and mental state or framework of the players. Not fans, not coaches. Lastly I am not extrapolating a line on a graph I'm extrapolating cause and effect of past psychology and game performance for both teams. It's speculative by nature, and n= very small (sample sizes). Your thoughts and opinions are all valid too. I really hope something clicks this weekend and we win. The strange, nervous energy vibe from Lanning for the post practice interview yesterday did not give me warm fuzzies. I've never seen him act like that before. Either Red Bull gave him serious wings or he is beside himself at practice trying to figure out how to get the players to stop taking turns screwing up or both!

I think talent wise we should win by 30+. But motivation and discipline closes the gap to near zero.

We really need to add an old school screen pass to the running back. When your OL is getting beat, it's easier to fool the DL that they getting to the QB for a sack. It would also help take the edge of the DL aggression.

I appreciate the comments that we only saw a snippet of Lanning's looker room speech, however he didn't leave himself that much room to pivot into a tirade of anger about them playing like crap. I'm extrapolating from what I see. I don't recall any Saban like outburst of righteous indignation at his players underperforming relative to what they are capable of. Did I just miss it? I think there are only two ways to have a primal response to underperforming: 1. Losing and 2. Being on the receiving end of direct personal derision in a social setting when you screwed up. I'll leave this last nugget to ponder: After the 2015 Rose Bowl win Mariota was quoted at being shocked with the yelling and screaming he was seeing on the opposite sideline especially Winston and the head coach. "Nobody on our team EVER yells at each other we always just talk things out." That approach was part of a culture that ended a few years later with a 4-8 season for a team with zero discipline left when Taggart arrived.

Has a Dan Lanning team ever gotten close to reaching their potential without a loss? I don't think so. I think Dan Lanning is an excellent motivator once adversity hits, but I don't believe he is capable of manufacturing adversity to the extent necessary to fully maximize his teams ability. After Georgia 60 point spread win, after UW 1 solid win over 10th ish ranked Utah, after UW 2 steamrolled the rest of the Pac12, after UW 3 loss destroyed Liberty. Idaho post game speech in us vs. them showed Dan Lanning's too soft in how he approaches his players to manufacturer adversity. He said Idaho played good, he didn't blame how they played, he blamed the process. How is a human exposed to all that positive energy supposed to play with that survival instinct that failure is a fate worse than death that needs to be avoided at all cost? Looking at the Beavers (who just blanked SDSU), the have been abandon by their family, become the laughing stock of the country, the fat kid sitting alone at the table at lunch. They've been playing like their survival depends on them overcoming that social stigma. And their coach is going to make sure the players believe the situation is completely the fault of the entitled rich kids Duck team. They will be out for blood, to dominate us on the field of play. Most of the starters for Oregon don't have enough historical skin in the game in this rivalry to match the intensity the Beavers will bring. Lastly the game is in Corvallis, the fans emotional support will be lacking and it will be an oppressive atmosphere. For those reasons and Ducks past performances, I submit that sports psychology extrapolates such a strong disadvantage for the Ducks vs. the Beavers that the Ducks should lose. And given the past, Oregon losing to the Beavers may be the only hope we have of getting the most excellence out our players to compete at the level needed to finish in the top 3 of the B1G necessary to make the playoffs.

From the athlete perspective it's nice to have an away game that is 30 minutes away. That is all.

It would seem increasing the size of the playoffs field was just in time for NIL. It gives the mercenary teams a few mulligans to get things straightened out, and potentially have some lower seeded teams that are playing better than anybody by the timee the playoffs start.

"Is the staff flexible enough to tweak their system to fit the talent they have? I think they're giving this team too much to think about and execute given their respective struggles. It just might be time to keep things simple add strategies once the team executes the simple things first" Recall in 2022 Lanning was looking years ahead trying to install the Georgia defense regardless of who we had on our roster, but left Dillingham to do what he thought was appropriate on offense. Dilly thought that tailoring the offense to the strengths of the players he had at the time was appropriate (very well documented). The Offense screamed ahead of our defense. In 2023 when Dilly left, Dan Lanning said yeah this offensive scheme that is highly efficient works great, and brought in Stein on the agreement he would continue the scheme. That worked great in 2023 when the Offense was mostly carryover from the previous year. Now in 2024 we have brought in all these new players and we stuff them into this scheme that works really good. Or at least it did with the previous players... We know Stein is tailoring plays to the ball handlers, but maybe struggling tailoring to the strengths/weaknesses of our O-Line? For sure he did not re-evaluate the scheme with a clean sheet to the extent Dilly did in 2022. This could be growth area for DL to really embrace the off-seasons and early seasons to retool the scheme as much as necessary to maximize the ability of the players you actually have, not the players you wish you had.

We beat a 25th ranked Boise State team that played very well, while doing everything that would typically cause you to lose. Rankings are a strange thing at this point in the season. Still a lot of projection about what they will be later in the season. If I'm projecting, then I'd say Oregon is around 10th in the country.

I think Dillon is close to where Bo was at this point in his Ducks career. Another way to look at it is it's basically the ceiling of what's possible for a QB in a Dan Lanning high efficiency offense year 1.

We're playing at top 25 level with the mistakes against Boise State. Continued experience building and learning of all the new new players can get us into top ten, but potential is a four letter word. We somehow need to prove ourselves better in conference than one of OSU, Penn State, USC to make the dance.

Been thinking about this too. One of the reasons the Pac12 was so hard is you had to be really good teams with a wide variety of characteristics. You had to beat Stanford and Utah at bully ball, and also beat WSU and OSU with pint sized speedsters. The more bias ourselves to compete with the B1G bullies, the less adept we are at beating the pint size teams. That being said, I think the Beavers will be the worst team we've played so far. If our team can treat it like a business trip it could give us some confidence going into league play.

I'm torn with this game. On one hand the OLine blocked significantly better in the second half. God bless Charlie Pickard but I don't want to see him on the field outside of garbage time. He is not him as my son would say. We still only put up 3 touchdowns and a field goal on offense. Our pass defense was great, but they still put up 34 points. Boise State's secondary was trash in coverage, yet we barely were able to take advantage of it. Dillon Gabriel had another great game despite the circumstances. Unlike hopeless Michigan, we have a QB. We just need to play our best disciplined ball. Hopefully we can get there over the next few games.

They also messed up the timeout bars at the end when BSU was burning them. Very stressful when watching a bootlegged version with no audio.

Relative to Saturday morning a week ago my expectations are clearly lowered. I don't see us winning against any top 10 teams this year. We could still win every regular season game and make the playoffs. It's too early to say much more than that. Maybe BSU and Idaho are really good this year and we beat both with a foot shooting gallery. Maybe they are just okay and we won't be able to clean up our mistakes sufficiently to prevent losses to other decent teams.

If Sappington That dude deserves the game ball!

That's floating in my mind, that despite us being really crappy this is a heck of an entertaining game.

I recall in Lanning's first season the teams got significantly better. Wow 2 special teams return touchdowns. I don't care what the review said, he let go of the ball before he crossed the line. It's a meme at this point, why do people still do it?!

That was a really aggressive defensive call against that compact formation. It looked bad before the snap and got worse with the stunts. Jeanty is a special dude.

He's been out there but really flat footed. May still not be 100% from the injury last week.