David Marsh

I agree that Nick would have been the best choice. Though I think the end of the legacy staff was fast approaching regardless of who was HC.

It did but it was also higher than Bellotti's so when I say norm... He is basically the average of Kelly and Bellotti. Regardless the recruiting game needed to improve. Kelly's average was helped by really one incredible recruiting class and being the hottest offense out there. I would argue that Kelly wasn't going to improve recruiting if he stayed and he probably would start to look more and more like Helfrich's numbers if he stuck around. The engine of Oregon recruiting was quickly becoming outdated ... A change needed to happen.

He was actually in the Oregon norm for the most part. https://fishduck.com/2022/02/a-defense-of-helfrichs-recruiting-legacy/ He was still under the shadow of the Kelly sanctions which reduced scholarships by a couple per year, not great but not a killer, but what really hurt was the amount of official visits per year dropped from 35 (max) to I believe 28 (I think it's in my article posted above). That was killer to Oregon recruiting at the time because the key was always get likely commits on campus and lock them in with the facilities. That is more or less still the case under Lanning. But with 23-25 scholarships spots and only about 28 official visitors allowed, they had to get really really selective as to who they would give an official to because they couldn't afford to take as many long shot recruits. Great example of a long-shot (that paid off) was Kayvon Thibodeux under Cristobal. He didn't see the Ducks as that much of a contender but decided to take an official visit and just take a look at the program. His time at Oregon completely blew him away and that was what sealed the deal for him. However, for every KT out there there far at least 3-5 misses. Even the master recruiter Lanning has suffered a TON of high profiles misses this recruiting cycle. Oregon was already a conservative recruiting operation and it got worse with those sanctions. The first recruiting class Helfrich would have had without sanctions was 2017 and the uncertainty of his position hurt that class. Taggart took over and brought in a class of a lot of Helfrich recruits who would go on to be stars... more on this soon as I finish the Taggart article. I do believe context gives us a fuller picture of these individuals. They're human and by default complex. And not to make myself out to be too much of a Helfrich homer but I do believe Helfrich had a culture problem within the program developing and it manifested in 2016. If he was save his job he was going to need to revamp the Oregon culture, which obviously didn't happen.

I don't knock the Pellum hire, it was the Oregon way to hire from within when possible and Pellum was close with Aliotti for the better part of 20 years. That seemed like a safe and surefire hire. It didn't work out that way in the end. Pellum didn't have the aggressiveness that Aliotti had when it came to scheme and play-calling. Hoke was a super-duper-major fail and he was the highest paid Oregon staff member that wasn't the HC at the time of his hire. The Ducks paid out for that disaster. There are so many things that went wrong with that hire. I think first and foremost was that Hoke wanted to shift Oregon's defensive front from the 3-4 to a 4-3. The biggest problem in this shift was that Oregon outright lacked the proper bodies to pull it off. It needed more defensive linemen and a part part of Oregon going for a 3-4 defensive front as to reduce their dependency on those linemen who are difficult to recruit as there aren't very many of them. From there on out it all just fell apart. I like to think if Helfrich was given another season Hoke would have been fired and he would have had another shot at hiring. Perhaps the biggest weakness in Brooks-Helfrich era was that Oregon was so dependent on hiring from within at times that many of those coaches never got terribly good at hiring from a large pool of candidates. Look at what happened to Kelly after he left, he may have finally put together a good staff by his last year at UCLA. Lanning has done an incredible job in his hires and Cristobal did a good job hiring good people on paper but that never really came together in practice. I look forward to writing on those two coaches and their methods more in the weeks to come.

I think it would have improved in 2017. I'm sure Hoke would have been fired and Mullens (and Knight) would have had say in the new DC if they opted to keep Helfrich. The reality was that the old guard of the Oregon staff was fast approaching the end of their ability to keep up with all the changes in college football. I had another article almost done on the Taggart year and I have one I started on Cristobal. Those have been interesting to reflect on as well.

I'll be honest... I feel like the retros were a little overused for my liking last year. I know some of the greybeards feel differently and I respect that. I also feel that Oregon's uniforms last year had two sets and they didn't really mix well. We had the modern color palette of Oregon with the black, yellow and white and then the retro green and white. The yellow of the retros is just a very different shade and didn't work with the modern look. Personally I'd like a set of uniforms that could be mixed and matched better with a few strictly one-offs.

But the program might be lost at sea for the better part of a decade as it was cursed by a cyclops. Are there any one-eyed trojan connections? Because USC has been cursed longer than Odysseus was lost at sea at this point.

They really need their classics department to help them out. Because the horse was the undoing of troy if I recall... I guess they brought it in because they thought it was a cool sacrifice to Posidon but still not their finest hour lol.

Good thing games are actually played on the field. So we'll let the games decide that.

Ok... It's rare that as a teacher I get to say I'm making more than that ... And I'm making more than that. That's a pretty high stress job for not a lot of pay. Yes... It's not football but they still have all the pressure to recruit, develop and succeed as any other sports team.

That's basically a pick-em but giving Penn State home field advantage which is what they have. Hoping that Oregon's defense can actually slow their run game this time around and our offense does what it did to them last year, considering we don't have Tez or Gabriel anymore.

Great get for try Ducks. Keep in mind. Everyone that December will roll around and things will open up and get crazy then too.

And I think they are shocked that they haven't been given one yet and won't receive one. They are trying to say that because of the Pac-12's legacy they deserve to be a power conference. But the only problem is that they don't have any of the power teams that made them a power conference.

I think the new Pac offers more opportunities for them in football. They probably didn't switch conferences if they weren't going to get something out of it. They weren't going to make it to a P2 (B1G and SEC) conference or even a lesser power conference (ACC and Big 12). But if the new Pac were willing to carve out something special for them then I could see it being worth it.

I wouldn't mind seeing the 14J formation make a return to Oregon. This jumbo formation was super cool. Oregon Football is The Embodiment of Modern Physicality | FishDuck FISHDUCK.COM As Oregon fans, we heard all about physicality from former HC Mario Cristobal over the last four years... Iheanacho may not be a starter as a freshman but I'm sure the coaches will get him involved regardless.

But without... Everyone else... That's a stretch. I'm sure they'll keep the "Conference of Champions" slogan too just because the conference existed when all those championships were won by those teams. So the conference won all those national championships right?

He strikes me as a player who might not see the field till year three. And that would be just fine. That's the hardest pitch Oregon has these days with the roster to stacked. "Hey kid, we know you're a big fish in your pond, but you'll probably not play for a few years outside of special teams."

Just need to wear the loudest green. It'll stick out in a sea of white.

What's interesting is to see how many have transferred again. Didn't Dowdell go to Nebraska? And Cardwell to UCLA? Flowe went to Arizona and is now at UNLV. Ashford went to Auburn i.rmember but is now at wakeforest. When you see players double transfer it's hard to miss them.

Are we stealing their color before we stop playing them for a long time?

Theoretically... Yes... In reality... No. If the Beavers were better then maybe the prospect of the last civil war could draw more of a crowd. But that rivalry feels more dead than alive. Is the Civil War Rivalry Dead? | FishDuck FISHDUCK.COM A rivalry is a special thing in any sport. They are a mixture of love and hate: love for one’s team and loathing for the... Washington is an away game. USC is a maybe if both teams are undefeated but and it's a big BUT that game is at almost the end of the season and the likelihood of USC being undefeated by that point is highly unlikely.

None that aren't name Gronk... And he's retired now.

We are quickly approaching the time where Oregon needs to get more aggressive with the NIL. I get their strategy.. or what seems to be their strategy but it's approaching go time for Oregon to take some of these recruits.

Unless they're winning! In which attendance might be good because winning is still fun. And if they're winning they can dream of making the playoff... only to be outraged when they're snubbed.

I could see them getting 12 million if they embrace that 7pm time slot and play hardball with it. I could see ESPN and Fox being ok with that kind of payout if they get that time slot filled regularly. But I DOUBT the Scrap-12 will consider embracing the 7pm time slot and they will probably all see themselves worth 20mil and prime time slots. They are still pushing this notion that they are a Power Conference but they are G6. If they were smart they'd leverage their west coast time slot to their advantage. But if they were smart they would have used that Pac-12 war-chest they stole and bought their way into the Big 12.