David Marsh

Only one coach in the PAC even has a warm to hot seat... Justin Wilcox at Cal. New coaches.... ASU, Colorado and Stanford can't have any sort of hot seat because they're new. All untouchable, they'll have at least two years to right the ship. Coaches entering year two... Oregon and Washington and USC (I suppose well count them). Too much new stuff and successful first season basically untouchable. Chip Kelly's contract got renewed after the 2021 season and his buyout is too much for UCLA to handle so it doesn't matter how he does. Jedd Fisch is building a program and is doing an incredible job. He has one of the hardest jobs in the conference rebuilding Arizona from the train wreck of was in. No one at Zona is looking at getting rid of him. Dickart at WSU might have a little heat but WSU's fiances are such that they aren't firing a head football coach for a few years. They opted to officially make him HC last year (he was interm the year before) so you can throw him in the 2nd year head coach group for all intensive purposes. Jonathan Smith is untouchable right now. Beaver fans would absolutely lose it, and rightfully so, if he was even doubted by the athletic department and they'd blame the athletic department long before they blame Smith for a down season. The beavers are going bowling again next year. And let's get real... Utah isnt firing Whittingham no matter what. He is untouchable. They stuck with him through the power five transition thry aren't touching him after two conference titles. So that leaves Cal and Wilcox... He's been there long enough there should be results but hasn't produced any. So his stat is heating up but Cal will probably give him two more seasons. This one and the next and see if he produces. So... I guess I write a response article to how their article was pointless. No one is on a true hot seat in the PAC this year.

I know many would poo-poo the severity of the sanctions Oregon received but they really did hurt recruiting. Loss of scholarships hurt... But what really hurt was loss of official visits. Oregon had always been dependant on official visits where they can get kids on campus to see the facilities. So the sanctions took the 35 official visits (laughably small by today's rules that allow something like 70 official visits) and reduced Oregon's officials down to like 27 if I recall. That's barely enough for one per commit. That really hurt Oregon's recruiting and it changed the mentality from giving official visits out to long shots that may be interested to really only giving official visits to sure fire commits. The recruiting classes suffered a bit. It's amazing how small things like that can change everything.

Need a top ten finish is the best standard to go on. A couple five stars would be amazing! A top 5 finish would be nice but the key is at least top ten and make a solid use of the transfer portal. The portal has its own rankings separate from the traditional recruiting ones and there doesn't seem to be a composite that integrates both yet. I'd also say the transfer portal rankings out there right now seem super subjective. Programs with the most hype seem to do the best.

Volunteers avoid bowl ban as NCAA finds over 200 violations - ESPN WWW.ESPN.COM Tennessee avoided a bowl ban but has been fined more than $8 million by the NCAA Division I Committee... Tennessee will finally be punished for McDonald's bags of cash to recruits. For the record this would still be illegal under today's rules as well, as this was coaches giving money directly to recruits. And even if these had been players on the roster at the time it would have been illegal regardless because at the very core of the matter here is that an institution and entities attached with an institution, namely anyone on the institution's payroll, cannot pay players. So yeah this is a a big fine and the article says it equates to a bowl ban financially and Tenn has self imposed some scholarship reductions. And for this "good behavior" it still really looks like Tennessee got off easy. We all know what happened to USC when they were hit with the NCAA's ban hammer over paying players. And we can all imagine what would have happened if this was Oregon or some other pac-12 school that was caught doing this. The ASU case for on campus visits, paid for my the previous coaching staff, during the 2020 season is still floating around. So we'll see eventually how ASU is treated by the NCAA..

I'd say colt was as much of a Kelly problem as a Helfrich problem. Lyerla fell apart at the start of the 2013 season... He played like one game. Sure Helfrich was the HC by this point but Kelly was the HC for the previous years with Lyerla. Those problems didn't come out of no where. It was a failure of the entire coaching staff in large part. Also... Special teams getting worse may have been the case but the special teams coach didn't change from the bellotti era. This was more a matter of the entire coaching staff having a bit of a drop off. Frost was also the one who did the majority of the play calling though Helfrich could give his input but he wasn't doing all the play calling. Then in 2016 Lubrick became the OV and did the play calling. Also Kelly's teams were pretty penalty heavy. They shouldn't have been that high but most of the penalties were really false starts that the coaches didn't mind because the offense gobbled up a lot of yards and could negate penalties. The wheels did fall off a bit during the Helfrich era but he really wasn't given any time to write the ship. He had a winning record and if it was the 2000's he would have been retained because his record was quite positive. If he wanted another HC job he would have gotten one but he has preferred his quite nice semi retirement.

I love the Lanning offense... It's innovative and gets the job done with a mixture of tempos. But I still really really miss the blur offense. I would say the current offense is more reliable because even if it's a three and out at least they can take time off the clock. The blur's greatest weakness was a three and out took maybe a minute off the clock and then the defense had to get back on the field for probably a long drive.

Might start sneaky good because everyone might sleep on it but then it's going to be a terror.

I love the way he just holds the edge and holds the contain until he knows he can make a move. I know those were highlights so he doesn't play that well every play but still great instincts. He didn't just blindly rush which I think is a big deal. Holding contain on the edge means that plays just can't go to his side which means the rest of the team knows where the play is probably going. Also you get a real sense that he knows he can beat his man on any given down. So him holding contain isn't him being contained but doing his job. Because once you know he doesn't need to hold his contain anymore he springs free and is going to party in the backfield.

In 2015 (when Petersen went to UW) we were coming off a National Championship appearance. Sark went from UW to USC and UW grabbed Petersen. Oregon had no interest because Helfrich was our guy at the time. Then there was some potential interest after Cristobal left but Petersen really seems done with College Football because of the recruiting side of things. He opted to retire from Washington, he was not fired. There may have been some interest back in 2012-2013 after Kelly but the Oregon tradition at the time was promote from within... Beyond that Petersen's offensive style was prostyle and Oregon made its name by being a spread offense with high tempo. The Oregon brand at the time needed to keep the Kelly offense so Helfrich was really the guy. Timing never worked out for Oregon and Petersen.

Something I read said that it looks like ESPN will be doing at least some production. So it's probably just a platform. On the PAC side of things oddly enough a big thing (that is also making everything more complicated) is that we actually have a production capacity. Larry Scott created the pac-12 network in what was a massive folly... But it's built and now an asset if it's leveraged correctly. CW, Amazon, Apple and any other streaming platforms doesn't have the production... But the pac-12 can provide that but that comes at a cost to the streamer which they know they must incurr.

And when the PAC gets a better contract than the big-12 and streaming is THE thing... Yeah we'll laugh at them all the more. The big-12 took an awful but fast deal and will be hurting without their big two schools. We'll see how things change in 2024.

Roku is pretty straightforward... And it's just about getting your feet wet at this point. Don't need to dive into the deep end just yet and go exclusive streaming.

Dan has a vision for what he wants his defense to look like. He didn't gut the ducks when he got there and took a year to evaluate what he had. He determined what he had or more to the point didn't have in that he didn't have linebackers who could consistently cover and didn't have edge rushers. Oddly enough the secondary did a pretty good job as the year went on last year but we're constantly undermined by the linebackers giving up the underneath routes and no real pass rush, in part to the underneath routes. And even then Lanning and improved the secondary. Oregon is going to have a monster defense to go with a monster offense. I still see Riley at USC playing big-12 style football... Namely shootouts. It's worked for him so far in his career... Well mostly worked. So it'll probably continue.

But we really aren't beta testing it at this point. I've been streaming games in some way shape or form for over a decade now. I used a friend's Comcast account for years to stream games. It worked just fine on significantly worse internet and a setup than I have now. I used to plug a computer into the TV back then. Now I can use a remote to access the apps on my TV to stream games. Are there some issues... Sure... But compared to ten years ago it's smooth. I know rural areas have more issues with internet than urban areas and I live in Portland so I definitely have better access to internet than those in more rural areas. So I can see some difficulties for those in more rural areas. When it comes to the tech to stream... A Chromecast or a Roku make it very easy. Personally I like the Chromecast better because you can stream stuff from your phone to the tv nice and easy.... In a lot of ways it's easier than trying to use a remote and navigating menus. If the PAC announces a deal that includes streaming I'll write an article on FishDuck about the easiest ways to get streaming set up. Once it's set up actually feels like linear TV and set up these days is pretty easy but I understand it can be daunting if you don't know. Streaming is the future but it's also the present. I know younger generations will have easier times adapting than older ones. I'm not trying to be dismissive but it's where everything is going and again I'd be happy to write an article about how to best get duck games in a non-linear fashion. It would just be nice to know what services they will be using but I can probably start writing one now as next season I'll be completely without cable and streaming all the games. And for the PAC... Getting in early may be here the money is and they can leverage the that pac-12 network debacle that Larry Scott made into potentially a major asset. It's not a beta product anymore... It's all about ensuring they can get the audience and that might take a year or two to ramp up as people get used to the transition. But let's also face it.. the Pac-12 network doesn't have much of an audience on linear TV as it is right now.

Just going to post one of my older articles which I still feel has a lot of truth in it. I would say Scott Frost was right for the time but times have changed a lot and the walls have certainly come down to some of the greatest barriers Oregon has faced in the past. But the mentallity of how to recruit with Cristobal and now Lanning has completely changed how Oregon is able to recruit. Scott Frost Was Absolutely Right About Recruiting to Oregon FISHDUCK.COM Oregon is hot on the recruiting trail right now. Just last week, Oregon landed 2022 recruit Andre Dollar over Scott Frost and... Then to follow that up... just take a quick look at how Oregon's recruiting was during the Bellotti, Kelly and Helfrich eras. Modern Oregon recruiting isn't in the same ball park. https://fishduck.com/2022/02/a-defense-of-helfrichs-recruiting-legacy/ The second link may not be working... I was getting an error trying to pull it up but the link is still good once it works again. But in short.. Lanning is bringing a recruiting mentality to Oregon that simply wasn't there in the past. Oregon was all about finding diamonds in the rough and every few years might be able to steal a five-star recruit. I would say Scott Frost is really stuck in an older school recruiting mentality and that bit him real bad at Nebraska. If he goes back to coaching in the G5 the older approach of finding diamonds in the rough works really well for G5 schools because that's the talent that they can get. But remember Frost's time at Oregon was during the eras of Oregon's building reputation and brand that attracts kids to it today... it was still pretty dependent on 3-stars. I remember during Helfrich's time that the Oregon staff came in 2nd with a lot of high end recruits... and coming in 2nd back then isn't what it is today. With all that said... I wouldn't want Frost back at Oregon and recruiting. He isn't a big enough recruiter for this day and age.

Give him a year... He will be spending half the season freezing his butt off in the Midwest and probably see more snow in a year than the majority of southern Californians will see in their life times.

I'm not sure if that individual is being sarcastic or not... Either way it denotes a major failure and delusion.

I'm cool with a throwback uniform. We saw it in 2014 against Washington for the anniversary of the pick. I also wouldn't mind seeing the uniforms from the early 2010's come back. Those were real nice looking (granted I really started following Oregon at that time so there's my bias). Granted the early 2010s was really peak bonkers in a lot of ways. Also... Chrome helmets... Wouldn't mind seeing those again.

It sounds like it's a third and short situation with the media deal right now. Just need to get everything lined up correctly and it's done. It doesn't sound like it's a 4th and 5 everyone poo your pants moment.

Would I like to? Yes Will I be able to? No idea... but hopefully.

Did that Washington board say they were going to flip Franklin? And like every other player at Oregon?

My reading of that is that they aren't panicked... That can either mean they have a good deal that is being ironed out or a deal they can live with... Spin it however you want.

Last year all the MC era runningback decided they wanted to mortal before the meat of the season. The fear of the portal is certainly a factor. Irving and Whittington are both juniors so they can enter the draft at the end of the year. I can see Irving being good enough to make the leap potentially... Whittington I could see needing an extra year but that comes with the risk of being overshadowed as he isn't really built to be an every down back of a featured back. So keeping players engaged is going to be difficult.

I do feel that Oregon is going to rotate through probably 3 backs regularly this year. We'll probably see the freshman play against PSU in the opener and a few other games in garbage time. I personally think Irving needs more snaps per game than he got last year... I also feel that he needs to be in the field running touchdowns in around the goal line. He only had 5 rushing touchdowns last year because he wasn't on the field around the goal line.

I do love the idea of using a huddle to just disguise stuff in general. Basically what if a huddle isn't actually a huddle sort of thing.