David Marsh

Oh yeah the SEC definitely is happy to not call anything. They let targeting slide half the time aswell. The refs also do protect their top teams and will often let things slide against Bama in particular.

I think we are heading that way. Oregon should already be the undisputed top Duck in the conference. Cristobal and his pathetic scheming on both sides of the ball handicapped Oregon. Oregon has had the best recruiting class for at least the last 4 years. Oregon has the talent and has been one of the best two teams for the past three years at least... But has failed to be dominant. Lanning can make Oregon truly dominant.

Umm... Ouch for Cal here. They lose to Colorado? Now I do think they should have called that pass that was knocked out if the receiver's hands in the end zone a touchdown. He made the catch and had possession of the ball. It was then knocked away after he had clear control of the ball... Thus touchdown. Colorado has apparently changed up a bunch of schemes with the new head coach. They might even have thejr future coach. Going young might be the key for them. But this is a super embarrassing loss for Wilcox. I think in a way Oregon fans are feeling even better about the Lanning hire. Wilcox still doesn't have an offense.

From the look and sound of it he has some development to do but the one thing you can't teach is that size. Get him to coach Love and build him up and Klemm will have him ready to go in a year or two. He might not be an instant impract player but can definitely be a big piece to Oregon's future offensive line.

Let's see what their defense can do against Oregon's Great Green Wall of offensive linemen. This game will all come down to which defense gets more stops. And I think our defensive front seven who have been pretty solid in stopping the run make a dent and slow the Bruin offense just enough.

NIL directly? No. NIL being used the way it is, paying for play instead of as a reward for hard work, is a symptom of a greater problem in college football.

You don't have to. The CFP poll will be dropping in the next few weeks. That poll is what matters. USC has the hype train of the AP behind them right now and when you read the vast majority of articles about USC right now you wonder what games they have been watching. USC has been good but far from dominant. Caleb Williams has been good but he hasn't been Heisman finalist good. That's where the hype is right now.

I feel it is not where they are right now that matters but where they finish the season. Under Cristobal and Taggart Oregon had seasons where they were ranked mid season but by season's end we were unranked. That was not a truly successful season. If you want to say a team had a successful season that team needs to finish the year RANKED. So let's see how these LA teams finish the year. They'll probably be ranked but something could happen that dismantles their seasons. And I would love to see Oregon be the reason their seasons come crashing down.

This year the Pac-12 does not have many road warrior teams... I think Oregon and USC are the exceptions at the moment. Though USC had Oregon State and ASU and didn't look too impressive in either game. Where Oregon struggled against a solid WSU team and escaped with a win and left no doubt who the better team was against Arizona.

Nix feels like an easy choice but I don't think it's wrong. I don't feel like Irving has gotten enough carries to really lay claim to offensive MVP but if he had the carries he could certainly in the conversation for it. Whittington for best offensive backup... sure. He feel he has been ok. Some frustrating runs where he gets nothing when he should have gotten something but some nice runs where he picks up chunk yardage. He doesn't have the physicality of Iriving and he doesn't bounce off tacklers to keep going. If he is hit, he goes down.

Utah... I want to be right and finally see USC exposed. USC has managed to skate by so far but in truth they have been lucky. They escaped the Beavers because the Beavers threw 4 interceptions. They struggled against an ASU team but pulled away in the end. They got WSU at HOME and were able to use the home field advantage and their superior player talent to push them over the Cougs. But this is going to be a real test for them. They are away and against a team that is more well rounded than any team they have played so far. This isn't last year's Utah team but they are better than all the others USC has faced and I want USC to be exposed for the team they are... a good team but not a CFP lock or even a Pac-12 Championship lock.

The way this is set up is that it is possible to stop but in reality you can't stop them all at once. The offense is only going to pick one of the plays to run but the defense has to account for all do them. if they pick the wrong one Oregon scores.

I think there is merit to moving Oregon State up. Right now I don't feel they have fixed their QB problem. I think they are still trying to fix it and it is an ongoing process. Oregon State gets Washington State this next week and or will be another opportunity to prove themselves. I need to see they have the quarterback figured out better. Their recievers stepped up in a big way against Stanford that's for sure and that can help the quarterback problem.

And then you pair all that with a scheme that is complex enough to make defenders hesitate and guess and you have a recipe for some big time explosion plays! Kelly and Helfrich made teams hesitate and they got points for it regularly. Make them work their minds as much as their bodies.

I'm sure they are similar. Stanford did a lot of very predictable stuff where they would line up and you could know with a 90% certainly as to what they were going to do. Stopping it was another matter. I feel Oregon has a bit more flare to what they are trying to do right now, a few more variations but I know Stanford back a decade ago was doing some similar things.

They didn't lose anything new... lets go with that... they lost their coach in a previous week.

Supposedly there may be an announcement connected to Kevin Warren, B1G Commissioner, speech surrounding the B1G media day for basketball at 7 eastern time... so 4pm PST today. We will have to wait and see.

More information please...

He feels like a new Troy Dye to me in all honesty. Not the biggest Linebacker but able to cover and defend against the run. He also can just come down and hit people.

I wrote this back in February. Let's Be Thankful For the Coaches Who Have Left Oregon FISHDUCK.COM In the last five years Oregon has seen two head coaches leave for their dream jobs. Willie Taggart didn't even finish coaching the... I'm happy he is gone... I feel we get so much out of talking about his current job at Miami because we see he hasn't changed and we are happy we are avoiding those frustrations his year as Dan Lanning is a major breath of fresh air. In many ways Lanning feels like an extension of the Brooks-Bellotti-Kelly-Helfrich continuity. I am thankful that Cristobal has brought a new age of recruiting to Oregon.

I don't think it really matters too much in the short run. The Pac-12 is probably hoping to make a conference with the ACC the Coastal Conference and that will cause some schedule rearrangement. The Pac-12 is planning on going down to 8 conference games. That does open up scheduling possibilities but it is most likely looking at adding "cross conference" games with the ACC if the ACC and Pac-12 soft-merger comes to pass. Otherwise I think there is a sense that going down to eight games will come with the encouragement from the higher ups in the conference leadership that the conference shouldn't schedule any major Power-Five match-ups because that could lead to being blocked out of the playoff, or a the very least a good playoff berth. The B1G plays 9 conference games, or at least they do right now. UCLA and USC have scheduled their non-conference games out for probably close to the next ten years and just about everyone else for that matter. I feel it will be highly unlikely anyone is going to have space in their schedule to actually schedule non-conference games with the LA schools. They will by default be forced to travel to the midwest, or even the east coast, for the majority of their away games. Also... if they have the opportunity to schedule non-conference games I don't see the LA schools wanting to travel anywhere if they don't have to and just try to make all those games home games.

Actually ... That's the Cristobal offense averaging the right amount of points more or less. Oregon's reputation as a high scoring offensive school has rubbed off on Cristobal's reputation even though it is blatantly not true.

The Georgia game is really holding our Defensive stats down in particular. Our offensive stats were hurt but the offense has improved at a much faster rate. I'm too lazy to do so but it would be interesting to see how we rank if you take out the Georgia game in terms of our defensive stats. They aren't going to be super crazy high but they would be much much better I feel.

Yes, Cristobal and Mirabal recruited our players on the offensive line and they are an incredible group. However, I would argue they failed to fully develop them. The offensive line was a strength in the Cristobal era but at the same time it wasn't as dominant as it should have been. Klemm and Dillingham have developed and schemed around this line to enable them to become dominant. I have a whole article looking at this idea tomorrow. So keep an eye out for that tomorrow.

I think the bigger concern right now is actually the linebacker position. Bridges is developing pretty quick and actually has a team high of 2 interceptions on the year. I think Manning and Florence are both developing quite nicely as well. But the linebacker position is missing tackles and getting caught out in coverage right now. They are the soft underbelly of the defense. They are making improvements but they are not there yet. Those two big runs by Arizona, one of which was a score, was a result of the linebackers being out of position. Flowe was also caught out of position at the start of a third down and Arizona managed to convert in part because of that... even though he did chase de Laura out of the pocket which is something scary as it is.