Solar

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.

After reviewing the game film Lanning basically said in his interview Monday that Stein should have adjusted the running plays called after TT adjusted to defeat them, and didn't. Personally I think Stein needs to get his butt up in the box and let Bo run things on the sidelines and field. Stein is a full notch down from Dilly at this point. Bland route trees, less ways for Nix to change play calls at the line, and inability to adjust in game quickly enough to the defense. I'm not saying he is bad, but being merely good isn't going to be good enough in the shootouts coming up. He needs to improve quickly and it's on Dan Lanning to make sure it happens.

With regards to the OL play, I thought they were dominant early in the game on a physical level, but the environment combined with the DL stemming and cadence got our OL flustered which quickly caused havoc making the OL indecisive when the ball is snapped. Lanning mentioned this post game as an area they would work on going forward. This may be the biggest opportunity to improve coming out of the game for any position group. Lastly, I'm not sure Bo's poor footwork when on the road with tight DB coverage is solvable after 5 years of playing. If Stein is a true QB whisperer maybe he can get through to Bo's subconscious state and fix it. He did settle down in the 4th quarter finally.

Same in the spring game. Also mentioned as an issue by Lanning in Fall camp. Our WR position coach can recruit like nobody's business, but is he failing at helping his WRs to catch the ball? Are some actually getting worse at catching? Hope not.

I thought TT did a way better job of containment of the edges. The only time we held contain was when a Nickel read the play and came downhill fast enough to tackle for a loss. It's almost like we have no DEs. No position consistently has the responsibility to contain. Certainly it is a complex defense but I am baffled by a scheme that de-prioritizes the edge in the era of spread Os. If I had the time and brains I'd like to compare Avalos' 2019 multiple defense vs. Lupoi's multiple defense. Both are complex. And between the 2020 legacy recruits and the learning curve for transfers, we still aren't out of the woods with having personnel that can run a complex defense reliably. Definitely hoping for improvement as the season goes on.

This is notable.I'll be REALLY upset when Ranked PAC12 teams beat Ranked PAC12 teams and don't move up, because they just beat a mid tier PAC12 team. Said another way, if our out of conference dominance is discounted without explanation there needs to be a strong uproar about the bias against the PAC12. I do hope the playoff committee does enough due diligence to avoid this. If this happens it would create very different ranking between polls and the cfp committee rankings.

I agree Charles. There were many plays I was envious of TT. I'd like Stein to pick some of them up. I think our secondary played pretty good in coverage. Shough had nowhere to go many times that resulted in throwaways or the times our defense got to him. It seemed like there was always somebody open every play last year.

I thought TT front 7 would be bad because they sent so many to the NFL last year. Based on what I saw last night I think they have reloaded. I would agree we were out coached at times. I think Stein needs to change his mindset and guidance to Nix to consistently take what the defense gives you for 4 quarters. We are good enough to win that way every week because our offense is so complete.

We've got Hampton on deck. If Wilcox is fired from Cal, it could be a reasonable move for Ducks and Wilcox. Many failed HCs go back to being coordinators. We don't know what Lanning really thinks of Wilcox.

Charles nailed the difference in this game was the havoc our defense created when Shough held the ball for more than 2.5 second. Lanning needs to check up on his sports psychology. Confidence can overcome much of the "adversity" and our response to it in the first half. I still question Steins route trees that don't get rubs or overstress numbers very well to scheme people open. As others pointed out our run O was predictable, and there were very few audibles by Nix, and too many low percentage sideline deep balls. This O seems more like Taggarts Gulf coast spread than what we saw from Dilly. Not good if this becomes a pattern.

Our O-Line is dominant!

Can TT and Shough keep up this energy for 4 quarters? A lot of times that underdog energy drains you by the second half. I would really like to see Oregon keep pounding the ball on the ground, and play to win the second half.