Solar

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.

LOL, now you give us the freedom when their is nothing to complain about! It's like your parents finally letting you take the car out by yourself for the first time and it's Sunday morning and all your friends are out of town. Joking aside, I appreciate the introspection and adaptability. Hopefully there is little to lose our "stuff" over this season.

I think I'm just as impressed how some of the top tier transfers are fighting for a spot against our HS recruits. I'm really pleased with the level of development I'm seeing from our young talent too.

I kept thinking that I hope Oregon is making their list of who they are going to pay dearly to keep one more year if we don't win a natty. Can we keep 1st round talent happy in Eugene for 2026 like Michigan in 2023 OSU in 2024 and Penn State in 2025. If we don't win it all this year 2026 should be our year.

I'm curious what people's thought are on Will Stein's offensive scheme for this year. To be clear, the ultimate metric of offensive is point per drive (and in a perfect world also factored by starting field position), and we did really good. It's an interesting sample against Montana State, where it seems pretty obvious the coaches were treating the game more as a proving ground rather than trying to exploit every match-up, so in a way it was a great look at the scheme Stein would really like to run this year, even though the playbook was kept small. But I don't believe it was kept so small that we didn't see the strong tendencies of this offense through the season. The.thing that stuck out to me is the lack of eye candy and option football. This appears to be a relatively straightforward pro-style scheme where the goal is to impose our will against the opponent with our better talent. The isn't much in the way of who has the football and presnap misdirection. There simply is a "am I going to hand it off, throw wide to the left or the right or down the field"; basically the defense has to guard the whole field every play. The real quick decision making being imposed in the QBs is working through their progression, not RPO or run option football. I'm guessing there are two reasons for that, #1 they prefer the Oline not have to hold back on blocking down field past five yards. These road graders routinely were past 5 yards when run blocking. The other reason is I'm still not convinced our QBs are great at split second decision making, at least not yet, maybe by the end of the season or next year. Lastly the QB and RBs seems strongly coached to take what the defense gives you, don't swing for the fences, which contributed to more methodical drives rather than a large number of explosive plays. I kept thinking to myself, so this is what it used to look like for Bama fans when they beat every mediocre or bad team by the same 60-10 score with very little in the way of amazing highlights, just pure domination. What do you all think?

I keep hearing about arm talent, but I didn't see anything super special. His spiral wasn't that tight and he overthrew quite a few open receivers. I'm judging him against the accuracy of Bo Nix' final year and Justin Herbert's last few years, so it's a pretty high bar, but when people start saying best ever, I'll say not yet. The bigger thing to me was he had command of the offense and his progressions. HOWEVER, that 3rd down play near the goal line after the blocked put was not good decision making. He got flushed out of the pocket, and ran out of bounds 5 yards short of the goal line accomplishing nothing. The announcers praised him for it, but he had the time to hold being the LOS and wait for someone to win the scramble drill. So I'm holding final judgement for seeing him operate with some consistent pressure. I do expect Dante to continue to improve like the rest of the team.

Watching the condensed game on you tube, Noles were balling and playing really hard, that impressed me the most. They are for real if they play that kind of inspired ball all season. Almost seemed like Alabama's O line was bad, but not enough footage to see for sure

Oregon 48-13 2 3 213 We shall see..

I love the white outline on the numbers; it gives definition and makes the colors pop.

Definitely interested in seeing who is getting playing time at every position outside the front 7 on D. Is the OL opening running lanes big enough to see from the nose bleeds. How many plays Moore wastes compared to the efficiency gods Bo and Dillon.

A lot of people have conditioned themselves for our O-Line to have a slow start due to last year. I think that is a false equivalence. Our slow start last year was due to the center being injured at the last minute and doing a poor job of shuffling the players around to find something that would work. I expect our OL to be dominate from the start, with missed assignments sprinkle in.

I think in general coaches are risk adverse and prefer not to play with their food and risk it running away from them. You can lose any given Saturday, so you'd better be willing to put your best foot forward to win.

I think the pass rush and coverage are the ultimate in complementary football. If the pass rush is disruptive the DBs don't have to guard as long, and if the DBs can guard well it gives time or the pass rush to get home and make coverage sacks. We likely will have the best pash rush in the country this year. Because of this and that our secondary will be so physical yet inexperienced, I think our secondary will play a lot of man coverage, to jam the wr off the line to eliminate quick passes before the rush can get home, and to minimize zone coverage breakdowns due to lack of experience as a group.

That's crazy. We only have 5 away games right? 3k miles average including a short jump to UW? That doesn't sound right.

WTD got taken down about 10 notches during Helfrich 3 and 8 season, when Helfrich was asked in an interview if the team was still winning the day. He responded saying "we're winning some of them." This showed the well had been poisoned, hence when Taggart arrived he got rid of it trying to instill some immediate accountability and agency for the players with "Do Something". I doubt he would have kept it forever, but lucky for us he didn't stick around for us to have to find out. WTD is still solid, based sports psychology, was never adopted by any other school, and represents a highly successful period for the program, so I wouldn't mind if it popped up around the facilities and on merchandise now and then.

Ohio State has never lost to a B1G team in a conference game either. They only get beat by themselves. If you don't believe me ask their fans.

This year's schedule is pretty easy, although within reason you only need to be elite in December and January. Also, top tier teams always have one and done rosters because of the starting talent, depth and portal. It's the new normal. Almost nobody is good enough to start more than one season on these elite teams.

Some guys just prefer a fixer-upper. It makes them feel needed. The only problem is they'll never be truly fixed.

I just watched that this morning. Yogi also said Lanning would announce on August 30th, so game day. The other interesting thing I noticed from the B-roll video is Moore's body language is waaay more confident than Novasad's. I think like most, we will probably not here anything until just before the game starts and it will be Moore. Next question will be if makes sense for QB2, who is in the same eligibility class as QB1, to stick around for the season. There is no future here for QB2 outside of an injury to QB1.