David Marsh

Keanon Lowe was a beast of a blocker... he just created lanes for runners by himself. I remember clearly seeing him block like 2-3 defenders all at once with one block, it was a thing of beauty.

Not getting sacked in passing situations would help a lot from an injury point of view. Simply put... if he is running the ball and gets to the second level he is getting tackled by linebackers or a secondary player. Ideally a safety or corner... but either linebacker or secondary are both smaller players than defensive linemen coming in at full steam. Or if he is running towards an edge he has the option to just step out of bounds and avoid a hit all together. I would argue that he sustained so many injuries because he wasn't put in a position to run the ball. At Tennessee a mixture of a bad offensive line and a scheme that forced him to play a style of football that isn't his natural fit resulted in a whole lot of unnecessary hits which led to injuries. Then injuries not healing or not healing properly just leads to more injuries.

The pass opens up the run and vice versa... Really need both to be truly successful. Oregon got away with being one dimensional last season for ten wins because no one besides Utah could truly stop Oregon's run game .... Well I guess UCLA did sorta but their pass defense was awful. Once Utah sold out to stop the run and covered the short passes it made Brown super flustered and easy to defend. If Brown could have hit some of those passes over the middle or deeper balls those games could have been very different because Oregon may have gotten their run game started.

Went to Oregon and graduated in 2012. I was in a car accident that should have killed me ... oddly enough driving back from Seattle after seeing some friends. After the car accident Oregon football became something fun to watch and something new to learn. And being the person that I am I became glued to everything Oregon football and quickly became a fan... though maybe not just a fan as I am pretty obsessed about my Ducks. Then just under two years ago I started writing for FishDuck ... which has been a wonderful outlet for all my constant need of talking about Oregon.

What about club sports? You counted club sports right? RIGHT?! or at least... that is what a UW fan would say...

I would say this problem extends beyond men's basketball this year but also the women's basketball team as well. Whatever it is this year Oregon just doesn't seem to have the person who can carry the team to the finish.

Only because when that Cincinnati game was schedule was at a time when they were a safe win. Times change and teams eb and flow. That is what makes so many of these non conference games such an annoyance from a fan perspective. Are we scheduling instant classics or a one sided beat down? It's a coin toss when it is a decade or more away.

Also...100 years between two rose bowl wins.. Then repeats at 2015 and 2020 Rose Bowls... In the last decade Oregon has had 3 Rose Bowl wins which is more than UW over the last 30 years. Sooo there is that...

I know with TAMU and their NIL contracts they bind players to staying with the team in order to actually collect it all. I would assume there is a clause in there about going pro vs transfer portal.

Charles Nelson also wore 6 if I recall... I know he didn't have the NFL ceiling but that kid just played hard all the time.

It was nice to see that Havoc isn't just up to the front seven. It would be great to see the corners up at the line of scrimmage and distrusting routes before they start this year... Rather then letting receivers run free underneath.

The sustainability of NIL is going to be the big key thing to watch. Especially when some of these big deals go bust because the player they paid for doesn't materialize. I don't think we will get a full grasp as to how sustainable NIL will be for probably five years when the novelty wears off and the results of all that money spent reveals itself. Some players will be massive hits and others will be flops, such is the nature of recruiting but now with big time money behind it. I do think Oregon and knight are looking at NIL with a longer-term lens than other programs. Using NIL to build a machine to invest on current players and future players without burning out the Oregon's donar base. Oregon doesn't have a huge donar base but it is incredibly powerful... So keeping them engaged and in the game is going to be key to the long term success. Irrational fan base and donar spending is at its height right now... But will they continue to feel that way if it doesn't come with immediate national championships?

It has been but it hasn't been winning so much overall... But what I love the most is how much it sticks out. Green and yellow! No red or white nonsense.

Kelly was more Oregon than Cristobal at that point certainly... I can absolutely understand the attraction Coda had for picking UCLA over Oregon. This was not a stable time in Oregon's football history. I'd probably pick Kelly over Cristobal if I was an Oregon legacy kid at that point.. I knew what Kelly could do (with just his Oregon record... leaving all his actual faults and problems aside for the moment) and Cirstobal was a new head coach at Oregon that was just a mystery.

So this is an old article from 2015 and Southern Duck's post made me think of it and somehow I managed to find it. Basically in 2015 NFL teams were complaining that the NCAA does not produce enough viable quarterbacks for them. Back then there was a stronger argument that that wasn't the job of the NCAA to be the farm for the NFL, even though it kinda was, but with all this semi-pro stuff going on now in college football there is a stronger argument than ever than the NCAA is just a minor league for the NFL... but I digress. The major premise of the article was that college QBs are trained to make the throws the plays and schemes are supposed to create rather than making the plays that are created due to the actual play unfolding. There is certainly a case for this as many of the most successful college quarterbacks are good at making the plays they are supposed to make and that's about it. We have certainly seen this as Duck fans... I would say Anthony Brown is a prime example of the inability to read coverages and go through his progressions to make a play. How many times last season did we watch Brown just take off with his legs when he should have either stayed in the pocket a bit longer or extended the play behind the line of scrimmage to make a throw? Also... how many times did we see receivers running open and free and Brown make the worst throw? This is something that isn't unique to just Brown but I would say the majority of quarterbacks in college can't go through their progressions and make the proper throws. I think even some of those big names with some those blue blood schools may not be able to go through their reads properly because they are so dependent on having high quality wide receivers who can get open due to their own massive athletic ability and the quarterback has to only make the prescribed throw. Want to know what makes Herbert so good in the NFL? A major factor is that he didn't have those game breaking receivers at Oregon to make his job easy. He had to go through his reads and make the right throw. Now... Herbert had an NFL arm as a Freshman in college and this made it difficult for receivers to actually catch his throws sometimes because it was moving so fast but Herbert could read the defense and get the ball into tight windows when he needed to. It also didn't hurt that Herbert had to learn three different offenses in his four years at Oregon which really did mean he could process the information incredibly well. In that regard, Oregon did prepare Herbert for the NFL. Now... my last though on this in this already too long post... I love what Dillingham is saying about his "pro-style offense" that is about getting mismatches and players in space. This is all about a quarterback making the correct reads and exploiting weaknesses. Now, having a quarterback that can do that is the next big question.

Number wise I agree with Charles in the article that if we hit 38 offensive points per game and 20 defensive points per game, I would be SUPER happy with those in year one of Dan Lanning. Those numbers may be good enough to get Oregon to the playoff as well, not good enough to win it but possibly make it. But the biggest offensive and defensive goals I have for next year are simple... make Oregon football fun to watch again. I want to see a fast moving offense that can score points and be explosive and a defense that can dominate. I want to feel like I can't walk away from the TV even for a moment because if I do then I might miss something big. There is something special about that and that has really been missing the past few years.

I think Oregon actually did a pretty good job of this last year... a 10 win season with our injuries is actually quite insane. The biggest problem with our next man up players last year tended to be a youth problem. There were some schematic problems that I don't think worked but the Ohio State game was a prime example of great prep by back-ups. Just by the end of the season Oregon didn't have anyone left besides walk-ons.

Only goes to prove that so much of Kelly's success at Oregon came from his offensive brilliance but more importantly it came with him inheriting a coaching staff that were solid recruiters and coaches.

This is one the the biggest reasons why I hate the division system for the conference now. This was a rare game to happen but the fact that there is a conference title game after the civil war game really makes this game feel less important.

The main focus of the alliance was to take the spotlight off the SEC. It has or potentially still has the ability to be so much more but it requires sacrifice that not every conference is willing to do on any given issue. They do need to make a splash with some significant if they want to stay headline worthy though. It is quickly approaching "who cares?" Territory if they don't come to some splashy agreement about something.

Interesting interview of Dan Lanning on the Talking Ducks Podcast. There are some adds early on so fast forward a bit but worth a listen. Some interesting questions and a bit more insight into our new head coach.

Also a big difference if that OL gets beat right at the snap and the defenders are in the backfield in a fraction of a second after the qb got the ball. Those sacks are absolutely brutal and unavoidable. In those cases the QB just needs to tuck the ball and go down... anything else the chance of a turnover increases dramatically. We'll see how good that line is come the season. My gut says it can be schemed around a bit by getting the ball out quick but that also limits the playbook.

Utah probably will... and that can be enough to rob USC of the Pac-12 south. I don't think USC makes it to the playoff next year regardless. I think they drop at least two games. One conference and probably Notre Dame. More likely I think USC drops 3 games. Riley may have a good offensive scheme but the Pac-12 is super unpredictable and though we may be seen as the "bad" conference the Pac-12 seems to be rife with upsets.

Additionally... I didn't even really mention the sanctions put on Helfrich from the Kelly era! Oregon lost a few scholarships, this didn't really hurt too bad back then but today it would be absolutely killer. But what really did hurt the program was going from 56 Official Visits down to 37 Official visits. That doesn't seem like much but even today's brand new Oregon coaches know that they need to get students on campus to have the best chance to reel them in. Cristobal was able to work some miracles in the 2021 recruiting class without having any campus visits available but no one else did either. Helfrich managed to recruit at a respectable level, by then Oregon's standards, without being able to bring as many students onto campus. This did lead to taking fewer risks because they didn't have the visits to spare for those 4 or 5 star players who may be interested in Oregon but weren't seeing Oregon as their end game destination. This was a big reason why Oregon was in a lot of top players top X but never their final location. For the 2016 class Helfrich was freed of this regulation but the culture had already started to plummet fast from that Alamo Bowl disaster among other things.

And this is pretty interesting as under the Cristobal era Oregon really did see a drop in their football player graduate rates. This doesn't really effect the overall recruiting because a lot of those top players see themselves leaving in 3 years regardless of whether they have earned a degree or not. This is also something that will probably spark more conversation as to whether or not student athletes are even really students anymore... oh there is a lot to be had in that... but it is still interesting to see how the football culture at Oregon changed under Cristobal.