David Marsh

Top Heavy wins National championships. Balanced is far more fun to watch from a strictly chaos standout. This is the Old Pac-12, a super fun conference to watch. Unless that is you have National Championship aspirations in which that probably isn't happening from a balanced conference. But still... fun to watch! I think I watched more SEC games this last season than I ever had because of the chaos. The chaos is super fun and I enjoyed it... I just don't want negative chaos around my Ducks. I want my Ducks to WIN without drama!

I'm completely behind Lanning and I do feel he is the one to get us to the promised land. He WILL win us a National Championship the only question is when. In reviewing this season I am nit picking everything. It is one of those seasons that the final goal felt so close but the team fell short and now doing an autopsy and figuring out why is the next step. As always, thank you for your insightful comments Jon.

Probably more than anything else it's the players. The Oregon secondary has been different every single year! I think Tysheem Johnson has been the only consistent face in the secondary for the past two years. Florence would have been, but his injury kept him out this season. Sure, Reed was in his second year with the Ducks and made an impact, but he isn't getting drafted or more to the point I'd be shocked if he is. Linebackers have had consistency as there have been three guys in rotation in the last two years. Bassa has been back there all three with Lanning and he has great qualities, but he was never a Troy Dye player... Speaking of which Lanning needs a Troy Dye in his backer corp. A great tackler and coverage guy and a fantastic leader. Defensive line felt good this year at times but still feels like it lacked that lock down ability on the run. I do feel the biggest problem continues to be the secondary. Hoping to see that change soon.

But if those wins are vacated the biggest problem is that Washington WILL hang a National Champs banner for the 2023 season. We all know those Huskies would totally do that the minute those wins are vacated.

The funny thing is that both of Ohio States last two championships can thank the playoff. 2014 the playoff expands and Ohio State slips in as the No. 4 seed. 2024 the playoff expands and Ohio State gets in because it's a 12 team playoff.They did then go on to win it all both years and taking out our Ducks in the process. But still in both years the Ducks would have been in the championship running regardless. 2014 we were ranked no. 2 and if it was still the BCS we'd get in... However the BCS favors undefeated teams so probably sitting that one out for the undeserving FSU who would have been demolished against Bama. Then this year if it was a 4 team playoff .... Well that is harder to figure out who would and wouldn't have been in besides Oregon. There were no other clear cut teams in by the old 4 team model of 1 loss teams... So maybe Notre Dame but they had that really bad loss to NIU. But in both cases it's clear that if the playoff hadn't expanded OSU would have been OUT.

2 loses, one of which was inexcusable to Michigan... And they had to play up to their roster's massive potential. No poetic justice... Just lucky the playoff expanded this year.

Just remember... Washington is NOT a stepping stone school.

Nope, you're not crazy. I think the Ducks could have beaten Michigan last year. The one team that played a type of game we matched up poorly against was Washington and we lost twice.

Unless it's not about ease of the job. I suspect he has a goal or desire to get a super bowl ring to go with his national championship ring. Can't get that without being in the NFL. In terms of comfort these guys are set up for life with what they're paid. Ease of the job isn't really a factor. It'll be all about his goals and what he wants to achieve.

I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if he takes the leap. I have a feeling he really wanted to stay in the NFL but between the Eagles and the Niners he needed to rehap his credentials.

If true... Next year may have some very nice depth at offensive line that we haven't seen in awhile. This could mean some more fun heavy set offensive line packages and more rested linemen if the chemistry is right. This year the offensive line was nothing sort of a miracle. Started off the year with two key players out in Iuli and Bedford. Never got Bedford back and we got Iuli back right when Harper went down. If not for that luck I think Oregon would have been sunk... But very shallow offensive line last year and I think it showed. Hoping next year brings depth.

Kudos to Kelly Graves for putting this team back on track. He's figured out something.

I'd agree with this. Though what i do feel it shows is that Kelly has long moved on from Oregon. I think when he retires he'll happily come to Eugene and be welcomed as a hero to the program when the Ducks inevitably honor him. But the warm welcome to Chip coming to Autzen otherwise I think is over. He got a very warm welcome in 2018 in his first year at UCLA and since he never beat Oregon that sort of continued.

Tampering is happening everywhere. The reality is that it could be someone on the NIL side of things who is no official affiliation with the program. There is no way to police any of it in the current environment. I am 100% certain that Lanning isn't calling players from other teams because that would be a traceable violation. We're the B1G bogeyman this year... we're going to come up as the bad guys even if we didn't win it all.

It's possible. Article had a lot of "could" and "should" language in it. I think Lanning and CO will move him wherever he needs to be. The bigger DBs are a huge get though.

I think Chip Kelly's legacy is a better recruiter than Chip Kelly himself at Oregon. If I jump to my Defense of Helfrich's recruiting article. A Defense of Helfrich’s Recruiting Legacy | FishDuck FISHDUCK.COM Mark Helfrich is generally considered the worst recruiter in modern Oregon football history. He is a coach who oversaw some of... On Rivals Mike Bellotti in his last four years at Oregon (the ones that were closest to the Kelly era) he had an average ranking of 26.8, Kelly was 17.5, and Helfrich was 22.5. Bellotti was the only one of the three that averaged outside a top 25 class. Helfrich recruited the same but with sanctions from the Kelly era. I have a future article about a lot of this but frankly the long tenured staff at Oregon just couldn't keep up with modern recruiting anymore. Right now Lanning has an average rivals ranking of about 10. However, that is because of his major outlier class of 2022, the class he scraped together due Cristobal's abrupt departure, where he came in at No. 26. do we count that one? I do believe that Lanning is probably the greatest benefactor of the Kelly era at this point because of how many recruits see Oregon as their dream school and that was because of the Kelly era.

Yeah it was a recruiting violation but most today agree that Oregon got a bit more of a punishment for the crime. Oregon lost about 10 scholarships and more importantly about 10 official visits per year. Helfrich needed to choose to use those official visits for more surefire recruits than taking long shots on big names. At the time the max official visits limit was 35-38 (I'd have to look it up again but it was sub 40). A far cry from the unlimited today. So Helfrich was working with about 25-30 official visits. Even today with Oregon's recruiting juggernaut, getting a recruit on campus is vital and beyond that using an official visits to do so can be all the difference from being taken seriously as a destination and not.

Except our fan base isn't delusional and we won't hang a banner in Autzen for it because we know we didn't actually win it all. More recently I believe the Huskies claimed the Pac-12 Championship in 2020 because they had "a better record" than Oregon and because they didn't play Oregon they "won the North" and as Oregon beat USC and won the conference the Huskies just declared victory in the Pac-12. Yeah... it's some painful logic.

Or... You count the interception. And Oregon wins by 8. Or count a field goal... And Oregon wins by 5.

It also explains why Gabriel had so many roll outs. Rolling out of the pocket is great to extend plays but it does in turn cut off portions of the field open to passing. The other side of things here too is that Oregon's linemen are BIG now. So if you take a slightly shorter quarterback in Gabriel he may have difficulties seeing down field because of his own linemen. He did have some good sized linemen at Oklahoma but in turn he wasn't going against other big bodied defensive lineman as often as the majority of the Big 12 before the departure of Texas and Oklahoma.

For revenue sharing I can absolutely see how title IX comes in for that. But the very essence of NIL is that it is NOT connected to a school. Sure, these NIL collectives have a school focus but they aren't connected to a school as an institution. If these collectives were directly connected to a school then I can see how title IX comes into play and can be upheld but the whole point of NIL is that athletes sell their name, image and likeness to third parties that use it.

Certainly part of it. I was tempted to make that another article but I've been on the fence. The biggest problem is that with offensive line play is that there aren't too many stats to really use to read into how well an offensive line played. But what is clear is that the offensive line played worse than they did in 2023 with effectively an entirely new interior. In terms of running styles... James has always been tripped up and then fell forward before he could break free in the open field. So that isn't such a new thing with this offensive line and Whittington has either breaks free for a solid to big gain or gets stopped in a wall of humans. That was the case in 2022 and 2023 before he was injured as much as it was in 2024. Gabriel also had a tendency to hang in the pocket longer than Nix which was certainly the cause of some sacks in the first few games. His height probably played a role in some of his vision or lack thereof. But at the end of the day Tez Johnson's average yards were down and he is one of the major constants in the offense between 23 and 24. I'm looking at average and not total yards because in 23 he wasn't injured. I probably need to do a look into yards after catch and compare those... but those are usually more advanced stats and are not as easily accessible to the general public. What is evident was the passing game was shorter passes for smaller chunks of yards.

Linebacker has been baffling why they have continued to struggle but keep in mind with linebackers in this defense their role is different than in more "traditional" defenses. Middle linebackers aren't strictly run stoppers and pass rushers but they need to cover. I feel we have some line backers that are good at one aspect of this or another but none are masters at all three. However, I feel Lanning is feeling confident about who he has on the roster because we haven't seen Lanning go aggressively after any linebackers in the portal.

That was last week's article... Rebuilding Oregon’s Offense for 2025: Running Back | FishDuck FISHDUCK.COM Oregon’s run game in 2024 was good. At 13-1 with a B1G Championship under their belt, the Ducks were a very good team this year. However, the run game… James was thunder but Oregon didn't have a true lightning to go with that. Whittington was hot or cold. James was pretty good at getting consistent chunk yardage and running against the B1G is going to be harder than running against the Pac-12 as the B1G meta is centered more on power run game so teams prepare for the power run game. With that said, I think Stein did a good job getting James chunk yards even against stout defenses. Against Penn State the Oregon run game did a good job marching down the field. But explosive run plays were few and far between. Getting a more explosive run game would help open things up. Getting a more vertical passing game would in turn help open up the run game. Stopping Oregon was tough but where teams found success it all came from slowing the run game stopping the dink and dunk passing game.

The stats were for all 14 games and both seasons the Ducks played the same amount of games. But you brought up a ton of good points. I forgot about how games were shorter this year with the new rules which would suppress offensive output across the board.