RatherBe

Great point. I, and most Oregon fans, are guilty of romanticizing the Chip era offenses. That was lightning in a bottle that the rest of football caught up with. Ohio State, Clemson, Oklahoma, and now Alabama have great offenses. While Chip has above average ones, Scott Frost has mediocre ones. What’s the commonality? Talent level. Here is another interesting stat: 2009 Oregon: 36.1 PPG, 412 yards per game 6.1 yards per play. 2019 Oregon: 35.4 PPG, 435 yards per game, 6.4 yards per play. The 2009 team averaged more points by virtue of 16/19 FG kicking, while 2019 was 9/16 and missed two extra points. 2019 only had one more non offensive TD.

The team really did look winded. I think it was a combination of them being out of shape from some guys going home and not taking care of their conditioning and how much time the defense spent on the field. A few players looked like they had no gas in the tank early in the season. Mase Funa being the most obvious one, although he improved by the end of the season. This isn’t to say they all did. Some guys like ISM, KT, Lenoir, and Wright were on the field for what seemed like every single play. A lot of Oregon fans were unhappy with ISM this season, but man - that guy covers a lot of ground for a LB. The defense was out on the field a lot. The -9 turnover margin was a combo of them and the offense, that combined with inability to get the other team off the field. The depth issues with opt outs, injuries and quarantine meant that we didn’t get to see the type of substitution patterns that can ease the burden. To compensate for the time of possession deficits Nick Aliotti utilized something akin to hockey line changes, which you can’t do unless you have adequate personnel.

I hate to admit it, but in the North the biggest competition will be Washington. Don’t get me wrong, I think Jimmy Lake is a clown and is not long for the job. Losing his great DC a year after hiring the worst OC imaginable is a recipe for disaster. Pete did stock enough talent on there to be competitive for another year or two. Solid on both lines, and their conservative style can take advantage of sloppy teams. In the South this might be the first year that they’re better top to bottom than the North. Chip’s team really impressed me in 2020, it looks like he finally started caring. They could have easily been undefeated in 2020, close loses to us, Colorado, USC, and Stanford where they looked as good or better than the other team. My picks North: Oregon, Washington, Stanford, Cal, OSU, Wazzu. South: USC, UCLA, ASU, Utah, Colorado, Arizona.

Yes, Mario is on the verge of superstardom. If he had better game management against Oregon State and Cal the Ducks would have been walking into the Fiesta Bowl with a storyline of “Undefeated Oregon snubbed by Playoff Committee” instead of the default Pac-12 Champs. At that point they would have been 6-0, and 21-2 dating back to the last loss of 2018. However, as Kayvon Thibodeaux’s grandma would say “if ifs were fifths we’d all be drunk.” That’s the key. A lot of ifs left on the table and extra Ls in the record book. I would venture to say that out of Cristobal’s nine losses almost all were the result of bad game management: 2018 Stanford, 2018 Utah, 2019 Auburn, 2020 Oregon State, 2020 Cal. That will be the key going forward, will the in game coaching be at a high level? Settling for field goals on 4th and goal, punting from midfield in the fourth quarter, becoming too conservative with leads are all things that are concerning to me. The inability to put an opponent out of their misery is the anchor of this teams potential. The very promising things outweigh the negative. There has only been one entirely inexplicable result, 2018 Arizona. Slow starts a few times as well, but the team rallied in those. The hire of Joe Moorhead is a fantastic move, and Andy Avalos was as well. The number one thing though is the recruiting. It’s more important than ever, top talent is being consolidated at the top unlike ever before. The lack of talent at key spots and depth overall is what really hurt the program, and Cristobal has done as well as one could hope to get Oregon up a tier. This is the number one factor to being a consistently elite program. I am not entirely sold on Cristobal yet. I’m giving him a partial mulligan for 2020, and I’m as excited for the future of the program as I was at this time last year. Taking a look at the college football landscape and Mario is positioned as well as anyone to be the next star coach. It’s going to take some luck, and things outside of Oregon’s control. Mostly he’s got to be better at game management, you can’t lose to inferior teams because you’re afraid of losing to them and play conservatively.

Adrian Jackson was the first one I thought of when reading the position description. If the position is the equivalent of what Cameron Goode played for Cal then Jackson would fit the bill best. Jackson is 6’3” 235 with great speed. A speedy LB on the outside is a feature I missed in Avalos’ defense. Goode really did a number on the Oregon defense last year with 3.5 TFL and 1.5 TFLx As for finishing his career - I hope we at least get two more seasons from Jackson, just 10 career games thus far. Jackson will be a redshirt junior with three years of eligibility since 2020 is a Mulligan. We only got to see him in 2018 as a freshman after he drew rave reviews in fall camp and in two games in 2020. Justin Flowe would be an interesting choice, although he’s a bigger guy he can really move and QBs would be scared. Not sure how well he can keep up in coverage. Jamal Hill I would prefer to see in a regular safety role, at the LOS he missed a lot of tackles by overrunning or going for the kill shot. I really like Hill’s game and he improved to the end of the season.

JTT, like other 2021 recruits, has been unable to have a regular recruitment or take official visits. His dad said no decision before April, that’s the earliest official visits could be allowed. Considering how few interviews JTT and those around him have given I’d say this is the antithesis of wanting attention, this isn’t Bryce Brown. Ohio State is the presumed favorite and he’s never even been there. You can’t blame JTT and his family for wanting that opportunity. Other prospects would have liked that as well, but JTT is important enough to make teams wait. It sucks for Oregon having to turn down valuable additions to keep a spot open, but it’s his choice.

I’ll admit that Jordan Happle isn’t my favorite. With the lack of experience at DB it doesn’t hurt to have more bodies and leadership, and if any of the younger guys are good enough to take away playing time then it’s gravy. Re-watching some of those games at times it was painful to see Happle’s lack of speed and poor tackling. It seems like 80% of the time he needs someone to help him finish the tackle. I recently rewatched that UCLA game where Happle won the Pac-12 DPOTW and had that key pick six. Everything just came out right for that to happen: 1. Adrian Jackson gets a sack and then a taunting penalty to encourage UCLA to take a shot. 2. Chase Griffin hangs on the ball too long trying to do something and Brandon Dorlus hits him like a truck, causing a floating pass. 3. With no time left Happle begins to hoof it, and because the play was so slow developing the UCLA speed guys are behind him. A great block and hustle by KT gives Happle the lane to take it to the end zone.

I’m liking the prospect of KT and Noah being on the same side. I can’t even begin to sympathize with the offense that has to deal with the Ducks bringing both on blitzes and dropping 6 into coverage. With the position/scheme changes it will be interesting to see where guys like Jamal Hill, Adrian Jackson, Mase Funa, and others wind up.

Best of luck to Heyward. A mutual parting, both sides wanted something new. It’s nice to be the school in position to make the decision. I’m going to be keeping an eye on other staff changes. There are several assistant contracts up for renewal and it will be interesting to see what Cristobal wants to do with those. Heyward and Salave’a we’re getting a combined $1.3 million - those types of salaries get you elite position coaches and recruiters.

Agreed on both points. Due to Chris Steele’s indecisiveness both Oregon and Florida lost a spot, and two kids didn’t get scholarships. Academic non qualifiers and injury retirements also still count, making top schools less likely to take a shot on those.

Brown showed tremendous improvement each year at BC. Limited in efficiency ceiling there by the dinosaur offense that they were running. My eye test isn’t worth much, but for me he has that smooth, graceful movement that good QBs have. Tyler has it at times, but he also looks like a baby giraffe on ice too often.

There are a lot of teams where Marcus would be an upgrade, some significantly so. He could even be brought in to tutor a younger QB, although the demands now are if you use an early pick on a QB you have to start them right away. If Jacksonville drafts Trevor Lawrence and brings in Marcus it would be fun to watch him with Urban Meyer. Or it could wind up like the Dolphins with them basically forced to play Tua while Ryan Fitzpatrick was on fire. They figured out pretty quick that Tua’s “It Factor” consisted of having five first round WRs, two first round RBs, and several first round offensive linemen. I still wish that Chip would have traded whatever it took to move up in the draft and take Marcus. Chip gets Marcus and keeps LaSean McCoy and maybe things wind up drastically different for both.

Players leaving the program frees up scholarships towards the limit of 85, but it doesn’t effect the maximum number of 25 new scholarship players per year. The limit of 85 isn’t too much of a problem, although if there were no more players leaving Oregon would be over at 88-89 as it stands, assuming 4-star RB Byron Cardwell commits and signs. Natural attrition from transfers after spring practice and medical retirements usually take care of that. Expect to see a minimum of four players leave the program between now and the fall. Fifth year seniors like Johnny Johnson do not count toward the limit because of the pandemic. The 25 new scholarships per year is what hurts. It’s a rule made to prevent the type of massive over signings the SEC used to engage in and to prevent the Alabamas of the world from hoarding all of the talent. But if you sign too many kids who leave early like Jamal Elliot or Jalen Hall you just wasted a spot you won’t get back. In the 2019-20 cycle Oregon maxed out at 25. Chris Steele was number 25 because he signed a Financial Aid Agreement that is binding for the school but not the player. It meant that when Devon Williams transferred from USC he had to do so without a scholarship for fall quarter, and then became a counter towards 2020-21 along with those recruits. It’s nearly impossible to tell how many spots Oregon has beyond the 21 current signees. The minimum is either 3 or 4 and the maximum is 7 - it depends on things like whether Jordan Happle was given a scholarship, if there was an appeal for Luke Hill‘s spot, where does Logan Sagapolu get accounted for since he did a religious mission which is a different set of rules, and so forth.

I was curious about the exact rules of the 25 signee limit, there was a hullabaloo two or three years ago about the NCAA making changes to tighten the loopholes. I read the NCAA manual, which is a bit ambiguous, but I think I have a pretty good interpretation of it. While searching around I also came across LSU fans wondering the same thing about Alabama and how they manage to go over the limit. First off, it helps to think of the year as the academic year. Right now we’re in the 2020-21 academic year. So the current class with the likes of Ty Thompson and Keith Brown are intended for the 2021-22 academic year. This is where it gets a bit complicated. You can sign more than 25 in one year, up to 28 in most conferences, if you undersigned in the previous year. So if Oregon had 23 new signees in 2020-21 they can have 27 the following year as long as two of those enroll early like Ty Thompson did. High school recruits, JuCos, and transfers all count towards the limit. A signee who winds up not qualifying academically or not showing up still counts. Looking at Alabama’s roster additions I don’t understand how they have been able to do it unless they’re winning some kind of appeal or having transfers/recruits be walk-ons. Alabama knows they have at least one more spot, or they wouldn’t be recruiting. They must have some damn good compliance specialists. Maybe the rules don’t apply to Alabama? A definite possibility. For Oregon this 25 rule has not been kind. Chris Steele signing paperwork but going to USC? Still counts for Oregon as well. Luke Hill? Unless Oregon appeals on the grounds he’s incarcerated and wins that still counts. Jalen Hall showing up for a few days still counts. Before they used to not be an initial counter until they received their financial aid. Right now Oregon is at 21 signees, and it’s difficult to tell if they could have backdated one or maybe more scholarships to the previous cycle. There are four slots left at least, and with Cardwell there would be three for any more possible recruits or transfers.

Out of the skill guys returning Jaylon Redd is the one I’m most glad to see. Johnny Johnson is a better WR, but he and Mycah Pittman are just slightly different versions of the same player who duplicate each other. I like CJ, but he’s like one of my best friends from college; love it when he’s there but tired of explaining to the class why he’s absent again. I was not a Jaylon Redd fan his sophomore year, so many drops and a strong gust of wind tended to tackle him. He’s really improved, and is that little speedy playmaker Oregon has a reputation for. Redd’s offensive stats are really similar to Charles Nelson’s. He’s also come up big for us, 3 TDs in the last two games against Washington including the 2019 game winner.

I have three conflicting beliefs on JTT. 1. Hat-on-the-table syndrome. JTT is going to one of the two teams that just played for the championship. They get the best players regardless of distance and have the track record of team and individual success that every recruit wants. 2. JTT is going to Oregon because at the end of each cycle Mario and company have closed the big fish semi-surprise fish every year: Penei, KT, Flowe. 3. JTT truly has no idea.

Warning: Long. Brevity may be the soul of wit but you’re welcome to call me Polonius. After the procedural stuff about the minor violations this is a story and some speculation that is of relevance to Oregon fans. Nothing bad, to my knowledge, about Washington. In their stead other villains take the stage. It looks like all of the violations were relatively harmless. There is nothing that Washington appears to have run afoul of. Luckily for us they look like they sanctioned themselves by giving the program to Jimmy Lake. There are, however, some very prominent connections here that could be of interest to Oregon fans. But first, here is a summary from the Indy Star on Notre Dame’s heinous misdeeds: the former assistant coach had impermissible contact with a prospect when he met privately with the prospect (Smalls) at his high school before July 1 after the completion of his junior year of high school. During that meeting, the former assistant coach expressed the school’s interest in recruiting the prospect. The Notre Dame assistant was Todd Lyght. He wanted to get a head start in showing Sav’ell Smalls that this heavy decision should lead to Notre Dame. You may remember Todd Lyght for being a good NFL CB for a decade. I personally don’t, but I did meet him when he worked at Oregon for the last two years of Chip’s reign as an intern/analyst. He then followed Chip to the Eagles. But he’s not the story. The story is Joey Thomas, who was the head coach at Garfield High School where this transpired and where both Smalls and former Oregon commit, Florida State Seminole, and current Oregon State WR Tre’Shaun Harrison were students. I don’t know if many people remember how the Tre’Shaun Harrison recruitment went down, but there were rumors that Ol’ Willie Taggart had made coach Joey Thomas some promises of future employment. These are just allegations. Nothing in stone, most people do not use stone for writing their unethical plans, very time consuming. For compliance purposes it would need to be two years removed from the signing of the recruit. They made that rule after Michigan hired high school coach and former NFL player Devin Bush Sr to be a defensive analyst in February 2016, just two months after his son spurned his alma mater of Florida State. Bush Jr would up becoming an All-American and the 10th overall pick of the 2019 draft, where he had a fantastic rookie season for the Steelers. Right around that time Tennessee got a commitment from 5-star OT Trey Smith, the number one recruit in one of the rankings. His sister had been hired as the recruiting director earlier in the year, Smith is a two time first team All-SEC selection. Once the Florida State rumors began Harrison de-committed citing the coaching uncertainty, while other recruits were tweeting that Willie promised them he was staying. Maybe Harrison knew something that others, like Braden Lenzy, didn’t. You know the rest of the story, Willie and Tre’Shaun to their dream job and school but Smalls was still up for grabs. It seems unlikely that Florida and Notre Dame would purposefully risk even these wrist slaps for just to make contact first. They know the rules. Maybe they weren’t expecting to be turned in. Maybe something got messed up elsewhere. Sav’ell Smalls tumbled in the recruiting rankings. Once the number 2 overall recruit he fell to 59th on 247 and 48th on Rivals. Only ESPN and their nearly worthless one man rankings (a story for another time) kept him as a 5-star, and he was two spots away from being a composite 4-star. As for Joey Thomas, congratulations are in order. This week he was named the WRs coach at Florida Atlantic University after less than a year as an analyst there in Boca Raton, a job he landed two years after Tre’Shaun Harrison made a temporary stop in Tallahassee. At FAU Joey Thomas will work alongside familiar names such as Jim Leavitt, Michael Johnson Sr, and Head Coach Willie Taggart. Maybe Willie will rediscover his coaching magic, if he did have some to begin with. In the meantime Willie has a promising team and a second gig as a receptionist for Owls, getting familiar ring-ring-rings and tweeting out that there are good news for Owls.

A minor thing compared to a DC hire, but maybe recruiting can help shed some light on future plans. It seemed odd that Oregon wasn’t pursuing more DBs for the 3-3-5 earlier but even before Avalos’ departure had turned up the heat on top-50 recruit and OLB Raesjon Davis. Davis is still expected to choose USC, although he’s visiting Ohio State this weekend. What does Mario do? He offers a scholarship to Davis’ younger C/O 2023 brother. Another top Mater Dei kid.

My initial thought for whoever the new defensive coordinator: you’re going to look good. Oregon’s defense massively underachieved last season. A variety of factors ranging from the conditioning due to the players being gone, to opt outs, to injuries, to plain bad luck. Fumbles bouncing the wrong way, refs swallowing the whistle on holding or blowing it too soon on ending of forward progress that stopped some fumbles. With the returning talent and experience DeRuyter is going to be able to improve it in a lot of statistical categories just by being average. Anything beyond that will be a bonus. The thing I’m most excited for is his defenses performance against the pass. That’s an area they’ve always excelled in, and is becoming more and more important in college football.

Per FootballScoop Age: 58 Alma Mater: Air Force Academy Position(s) coached: outside linebackers Tim DeRuyter is currently the co-DC and Associate Head Coach at Cal, where he has been since the 2017 season. From 2012-2016 he was the Head Coach at Fresno State, winning two Mountain West conference titles and coaching players such as Derek Carr and Davante Adams. Prior to getting the Fresno job DeRuyter spent two seasons as DC at Texas A&M, where his defense led the country in sacks with his star pupil Von Miller.

Greg Byrne is the man for the job. He has a lot of ties to the conference. Byrne grew up in Eugene, college at Arizona State, worked as assistant or associate AD at Oregon and OSU, and AD at Arizona. Was also AD at Mississippi State. At Oregon he had the job of cultivating the relationship with Phil Knight 1995-98, so key for Oregon’s growth. He raised a lot of money. At Miss State he hired Dan Mullen, and RichRod at Arizona. Other than being an experienced conference commissioner he is the perfect candidate. President Dr. Schill is ideal to lead the search, because he will listen to the right people. People who understand sports have Schill’s ear, and the other presidents will defer to him.

Great news. The upcoming TV rights negotiations could not have been handled by Larry Scott. He had a chance to re-make the college football landscape, but let Texas slip through his fingers. After that it was all downhill. Bad business decisions compounding bad competitive decisions. Good news: The Pac-12 supposedly has built up some equity with the Pac-12 Network. At worst they can sell all the rights, instead of the current set up. CBS and the SEC are parting ways, it’s an opportunity. Bad news: This isn’t the TV landscape of 2010 with all the cord cutting. This also isn’t the same Pac-10/12 that it used to be. Next: Hire an experienced conference commissioner. Not the head of the world badminton association or something. Failing that, an experienced AD. Which may very well be Rob Mullens, although he has millions in bonus money coming if he stays at U of O.

I didn’t mean that as an affront to Ty, he sounds like a great kid. As Hayward pointed out he’s also a super student, so academics won’t be an issue. You’re also probably correct in that we overestimate the difficulty of the transition, especially since these guys have a structured environment and support system within the program. It is a factor though, and us fans only see it when it makes news. A recent example would be Ge’mon Eaford, who had academic issues and needed to go the JuCo route. LaMike James has talked about how close he was to transferring during his redshirt year because he was homesick. We know what Colt was up to. There are others who left the program or struggled otherwise for non football related reasons. In this case we are not just talking about staying on the team, we want a kid to take over a job that automatically makes you a big name in college football Anecdotally, I thought I would have no problems. I had really good grades, highly educated and supportive parents, played sports and did activities in school, was very outgoing, took a year off and had already lived on my own, etc, etc. It was still tough for me. Not academically, the first year or two are cake, but with things like missing my girlfriend back home, time management, partying too much, laziness - just teenage stuff. Plenty of people I knew from freshman year didn’t make it to their junior year, let alone graduation. Haha, thankfully for us Ty isn’t a slacker like me.

Ty Thompson has been on campus since the first week of the year. Even if there are no team activities and everything on campus is being done differently due to the pandemic he’s already getting a leg up on adjusting to his new life and bonding with the team. Sometimes it’s easy to forget these are 17/18 year olds who are away from home and living on their own for the first time. Ty is in a new city and climate, surrounded by new people, enrolled in classes. On top of those things that kids with no other significant responsibilities can fail with here’s a playbook to learn, workout regimen to complete, tape to watch, teammates to win over. No pressure or anything, but a bunch of adults are hoping you are really good at the thing we brought you here for. I can’t even fathom the pressure. At that age my responsibilities were to go to class and get good grades, figure out how to cook something, and to not do the following: get in a car accident, get anyone pregnant, or get arrested. Statistically, the odds of a true freshman QB starting are not on Thompson’s side. Before Herbert the last true freshman to do so at Oregon was Chris Miller in 1983. Burmeister did as well, but of course that was borne out of not having a choice. Of course we haven’t had a QB recruit quite like Ty, although Clemens and Dixon were both high 4-star recruits. It has also become more common in the last decade to see true freshmen QBs. Thompson has walked into a nearly ideal situation, an open competition on a team that has depth on offense. Hopefully the virus situation allows for a regular spring of football, complete with a spring game - even if at this moment it appears unlikely that fans would be allowed. There wasn’t much of an opportunity for a QB competition in 2020, which was to Shough’s advantage. If there is no separation after the spring and the nearly inevitable transfer outs there is still fall camp. I don’t have a crystal ball, or at least an accurate one, but I do have a hope that I think many of my fellow Ducks share: Ty comes in and is so incredibly good that the competition is not a competition. We all know there’s a narrative attached, in the media and among fans, and if the hot shot recruit freshman wins the job it will be positive. I wouldn’t be surprised if Thompson winning the job even bumps Oregon up a few spots in the pre-season polls because the narrative will be something along the lines of: superstar recruit wins Oregon QB job over incumbent starter and other blue chip recruits, Oregon looks to the three-peat as Pac-12 champs and make CFP run.

Tim DeRuyter wouldn’t be a bad choice. I have no doubt he would leave so fast he’d leave a cartoon outline of himself and a trail of dust. $400k/year in the Bay Area, the Cal defense is viewed as all Wilcox, with Peter Sirmon as the co-DC who makes nearly double. Oregon was paying Avalos more than double that, while Salave’a and Heyward get paid $650k and $600k. The question is if we would want him. DeRuyter looks like he’s had DC success at every stop he’s been at: DC at Ohio, Air Force, and Texas A&M. Had two good years as Fresno State HC, including an 11 win, conference championship season before two losing seasons and a 1-7 start as part of a 4-16 run got him canned. He’s an LB coach, which is what Avalos left. It doesn’t look like DeRuyter ever recruited anyone Oregon would ever take, but has obvious California ties. Someone will eventually hire him. Low salary and good experience makes him a viable candidate. Maybe a candidate for Washington’s new opening, as is Peter Sirmon. Which if Sirmon leaves I imagine DeRuyter would be their DC although I doubt he would turn down Oregon if given the choice. Not the sexiest candidate, but we don’t need a flashy hire if they’re effective.