Solar

It's crazy that the Ducks have both depth and virtually no injuries. At the level Oregon Washington and USC are at, it only takes one injury to derail championship/playoff aspirations -the QB. No Nix, No Penix, No Williams, no show.

If I were a actual bettor, I would not touch this game with a 10 foot pole. It seems far more likely for it to end up tied or losing at the end of regulation than for Oregon to win by 42, but probabilities are nonlinear so that is irrelevant. Colorado appears to do better away than home, and they will compete for 4 quarters, if I was forced to chose, I would pick Colorado at -21.

One comment to add, CU is getting their running back back from injury that Lanning just compared to Derrick Henry. It does add a bit of dimension to their game plan, and much better chance on short yardage plays. That being said, HI had that dimension with their converted OL RB and we didn't do too badly with it.

Thanks for catching that, spell checker sniped me there. It wasn't about any particular practice, it was the sum of everything that consistently occurred in practice that we never saw. Perhaps the amount of effort, perhaps perceived willingness to bash in your brains for practice glory, perhaps just not performing error free in a low care setting, etc.

Something that has reduced my stress levels regarding possible legislation is to first determine if the there is a status quo group of rich and likely politically connected private citizens that stand to benefit from the legislation passing. If you can't identify that group of individuals, then it has a zero percent chance of actually passing. I don't know how rich people would benefit from NIL legislation, with the legislation presumably going to restrict how rich people can spend their play money. Maybe I'm missing something though.

I hope Lanning is wise enough to realize that you NEVER. EVER. UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, outside a hail Mary, play prevent defense against an elite clutch QB which there are 5 or so in our league to deal with. The only thing it will do is prevent you from winning. Keep up the QB pressure with numbers on the line and blitzes, pull out the LBs, and lean on the DBs to ball out with tight coverage.

One thing that drove me nuts about Cristobal was his religious dedication to the notion that how you practice is how you play in the game. This resulted in ballers, people with clutch, people with an extra gear in the game riding the bench. Brady Breeze and Deadwood Davis are two examples of individuals that made magic happen when they were around the ball, then immediately disappear to the sideline remaining buried on depth charts. I've always thought that how players do in practice is a starting point, and when the player goes in the game and tells you who they really are YOU DON'T IGNORE THEM. Lanning on the other hand, appears to listen. For all the projections about what the depth chart would be, they've been irrelevant. Playing time in the spring game and scrimmages, and in the preseason games has been fluid and demonstrated that Lanning is adjusting to the actual production, help and hurt players are providing on the field of play. Lanning plays the ballers. Another example is his recent statement about penalties, that if you are going to rack up penalties and hurt the team, you won't play. It doesn't matter how good you practice. If you keep giving the other team's offense a first down on a blown up 3rd down, or you keep putting our offense a mile behind the sticks, then you won't play. I find Lanning approach to player evaluation very refreshing.

That's too narrow/vertical. We have FCS and FBS, just need to make an FAS with top 36-48 teams pulled out from FBS. If we want a relegation system between FBS and FAS, fine.

9.3 million people were watching a Mountain West team after midnight last weekend. There's no precedent. I expect Colorado vs. Oregon to darn near break regular season game viewership records. Should be roughly 15 million viewers. For that reason alone this is the most important game of the year for Oregon as a program.

They have G5 size, CSU looked much bigger than them actually. They don't have much depth. They do have speed and make the most of whatever abilities they do have. I could see them giving us fits, and giving us a scare, odds of losing are not zero, but pretty low though. The current line above 15 points sounds about right.

3.5ypc? That's garbage with the backs we have. That would be a failure mark for our OL. As I keep saying, Terry is a Cristobal disciple. Klemm had to get OL to unlearn some techniques, whichever ones those were, for whatever reasons. Pass blocking is great and light box run blocks are great. When things get overloaded in the box is when they have trouble. It even worse when the play moves horizontal. The guards do seem to be a bit of a weak spot right now too. I'm not going to complain. It could be way worse.

Coaches poll sucks this time of year. That's what get when coaches spend 5 minutes looking at who won and lost this weekend, and haven't played enough teams to make any relativistic determinations. AP poll looks pretty decent. Blue bloods continue to get the benefit of the doubt until they lose to non-blue-bloods, which I don't care for though.

Their inability to score will prevent them from winning against teams with good offenses, I don't care how good their defense is. This is 2023. They should lose to LSU. They would lose to the top half of the PAC12 for that matter. Is Texas really back? I remember that year they beat ND week one and it turned out both teams were trash.

Best case scenario for the Ducks that CSU showed us how to beat Colorado, took them to an emotional overtime, but Colorado still won. We get to play a ranked Colorado team at home next week that won't have a psychological advantage ofer us and may be a little physically and emotionally worn down.

My man, your not understanding here. Definitely let this convo drop. Let's move on to discussion of the teams' play on the field from here on out.

I think Sanders has a lot better understanding of sports psychology than most ever will. Frankly, he was born with it. Pretty much everything he says makes his team play better than if he'd kept his mouth shut. I wish we could have coach Prime in Bo's ear before every away game to get his head right. Sustained confidence, urgency and resolve can overcome any adversity, even losses they will inevitably experience.

DL will pour cold water on it with his usual anti-bulletin board commentary on the opposing coach and players next week. Something along the lines of "I really respect what Coach Prime has accomplished there. They've got some great players...and if we don't play our absolute best they can beat us."

Agreed. I commented in the real time game thread our OL was dominant the first few drives. DeRuyter loaded the box, stemmed like heck and the OL got overwhelmed and gave up leverage and aggression. I will say Klemm said last year he had to reteach the OL how to block. Presumably that meant teaching them how to best move laterally. Terry is a Cristobal disciple. This is all a little premature to declare our OL as bad for 2 halves of innefective play against a loaded box from a solid defense.

I'm with Charles that I don't think we could have gotten away with any more low percentage deep pass plays than we did. Because of penalties and ineffective runs we were behind the stick bad for most of the game making it too risky to spend a down on a high risk play. Without being behind the sticks so much in future games it will make more sense to throw deep ball more often.

THIS. Any investor or business person with financial responsibilities would be obligated to do the same as proper risk management.

So if I understand you correctly, those who include consideration of being paid alongside all the other considerations of being recruited are big ego attention seekers that don't care about trying hard or winning? I disagree.

Was Conerly not an SC lean when he came on an unannounced, short weekend visit the week before he committed? He'd already had his Oregon official and other visits before this. There were no practices to watch, no facility tours and photo shoots needed. He came and talked to the coaches and...NIL? These type of visits didn't used to happen in college recruiting did they? I'm speculating sure, but it would be foolish not to.

Like the article says, if we can't get him on campus (for an NIL pitch he can't refuse, like we did for Conerly) at the last minute, there is no way he picks us. Competition for the very best has been stiff this year and we're striking out. I'm hoping for a little luck after the season and for the class of 2025.

Well, in your defense, JW probably has the hottest seat in the PAC12 right now, and it is fairly common for fired HCs to go back to being a coordinator.

That may be the only beneficial practice coming out of the Hawaii game; for the secondary to learn not to panic with the deep ball. Catch up, turn around and you'll be fine. Hopefully their DL stems a lot so our OL can get comfortable with it, but I don't know if they do.