UtahDuck

You have a lot to unpack here so i will try and keep this simple because i disagree with a lot of what you said. I do believe Cristobal held us back with a lot of what you said(playcalling, clock management, and scheme). This isn't to say that injuries didn't play a roll. I look specifically at ILB where for a good portion of the season we were down to 1 starter, 1 safety converted to ILB and Walk ons. There's a reason we got passed all over in the middle of the field... We had 3-5 guys injured in this depth. Recruiting, Yes, Rivals, 247 and on3 make a living projecting recruiting. but to dictate that a SEC 2 star across the board is better than a west 4 star is not something I agree with. If these rating systems actually projected an Southern 2 star to be better than an oregon 4 star they would be ranked as such because I can promise they make more money of southern subscribers than they do PNW. With rankings in general you need to take it with a bit of salt anyway. I think it's a good baseline but it isn't the end all be all final answer. It's also why you need to look at how many schools have offered a player and what schools are offering the player. Would you take a player that is a three star that has offers from 10 SEC schools, 9 Big 10 schools, and 11 Pac 12 or a 4 star that has three Pac 12 offers... To top off recruiting, no system is perfect, players will get over evaluated, players will get under evaluated, walk ons will earn scholarships and players will be dropped from the team. it's the nature of college athletics. But you could say the same about the NFL, Tua, Trevor Lawrence both got better evaluations than herbert yet everybody would pick herbert today. With that I don't think the Oregon teams recruited by Cristobal were/are overrated. their are inevitably players that are overrated and underrated. And to understand this go to the 247 and you can quickly view the players that signed and how many other offers those players had. Oregon was frequently beating out SEC teams including alabama for players. If anything I would say this team had an issue at developing talent. Especially at key areas like QB. As a final note, I think 8 wins is a bad season for oregon next year and the O/U should be at 10. I would say UGA is a sure loss. after that I think you have a lot wiggle room. BYU is a meh team that took advantage of some really bad teams in the pac last year. at best this game is a 50/50 game to date. depending on how the QB shakes out in spring this game moves to 75/25 Oregon. WSU is probably 65/35 or 60/40 game. Stanford is bad, and clock management and playcalling alone should fix that game. 90/10. OSU is losing way more than they are gaining. Oregon should have an easy time with them. 75/25. UA will be interesting especially in the desert. The game should be 80/20 but to me it feels more 60/40 or 55/45. as for UT I think they should get the benefit of the doubt and be 40/60 or 30/70 unless but as it is another late season game oregon could close that gap to 50/50 if they make the right improvements. All in all oregon should be a minimum 9-3 for 2022. I mean oregon suffered a ton of injuries had horrid play calling and clock management and had brown starting this season and we went 10-2 during the regular season. If some of that is fixed oregon is easily 11-1.

I don't know if I am ready to give Oregon a 9-0 in conference record. The pac is bad, but honestly no team has run the table in conference so it is hard for me to see it happening with a first year head coach. Teams oregon should run over. UW, Stan, CAL, COL, UCLA, and OSU, Teams I have Questions about. WSU, and AZ. Hard fought games. UT. I think as a whole the P12 north is really bad, I don't see CAL getting any better. OSU needs to prove a lot more otherwise I can't expect them of being +/- a game within .500. UW has a mess to clean up and with all of the defections and the fact the staff plans to keep the current exclusive recruiting plan i'm stoked. The only north team I have questions on is WSU. following Rolo's firing WSU went 3-3. The three losses included a 2 point loss to byu a 14 point loss to Oregon and a 3 point loss Central Michigan. They beat ASU, AZ and UW. So my first part is they didn't really beat anyone during this but they also kept some close games and finished out well and make a bowl game. This was all done while running an offense that no coach had called before because Rolo ran the Run & Shoot. To also follow up, with WSU, I think they are upgrading at QB. Cameron ward is transfering from Incarnate Word as a 4 star player Cameron through 4648 Yards 47 TD and 10 INT's completing 65% of his passes. He will in my opinion be the most accomplished QB in the pac 12 north next season. While Jackson JR at WSU is gone they still have very accomplished Harris contemplating a return and Stribling to catch balls. This team has a good chance to improve upon their 7-6 record in 2022. The other team I have questions on is AZ. Look AZ has been bad for years but with that they currently have the number 2 class in the pac 12 in recruiting(247) and while some of that may be due to the size of their class, they still have the number 6 class per average recruit. What makes me have questions about AZ is primarily at WR. AZ has added UTEP transfer Jacob Cowing who is really good and their best recruit is the Wide receiver who flipped from Oregon Tetiaroa McMillan. Elite Wide receivers can make up for a lot of deficiencies in the game. AZ also had the worst luck at QB in 2021 with 3 making starts. I think Jordon McCloud should be a decent to above average QB when given the time. If I were a betting man(most days i'm not). I would think one of these games has the greatest potential to be an upset. Both are away games, both are earlyish games in the season(week 4-WSU, Week 6-AZ) for a brand new coaching staff. I also honestly think both teams are better than their 2021 record and both have made key player improvements in the offseason.

This. I think USC will have enough talent to beat most of the pac but the reason oregon rolled them in both 19 and 20 is that oregon has beaten them across the lines. Add in that Lincoln Riley has never rebuilt a team and it will be interesting to watch how USC moves forward. They have a lot to present and improve upon. And maybe this is just me but I think USC attracts more of the "me" players rather than team players and because of this I think they will have a consistent disadvantage in actually being coached up and improving.(completely personal opinion). With that, I'm not ready to give oregon a win against Utah in Autzen just yet. I would like to see how our offensive coordinator improves opening the playbook and if we can get average to above average qb play.

I don't think this is a very good assessment at all. First of all we only have about 12 spots anyway. Mario was planning to oversign and push players out.(most teams of the top teams oversign but it's usually only by 2-3) Mario was planning a full class of 20-25. The fact is mario would have lost a lot of talent in transfers and decommits as well. second as far as talent goes, this obviously isn't oregon's best class but despite that fact 247 and rivals list this class as the second best in player average. It's like asking would you rather have 15-20 C- to B- ranked players are 8-10 B to A- players. Overall I would take talent over numbers. Finally I think this roster has too few holes to justify going 8-4. especially when you compare it to the pac 12. If you look at our schedule we miss the most talented team(outside of oregon) on our schedule(USC). In our south crossovers we get AZ, COL, UT, and UCLA. and the north is looking to be a mess. Oregon should go 5-0 against our division, As I haven't seen anything from any of the teams that tell me they will improve significantly. Looking at the south, I think AZ improves but they just finished the season 1-11. Colorado looks to be slipping more. Then UT and UCLA even if I chalk both of those games as losses.(i think we have good chance with UCLA as both games are at Autzen). I don't even think we need elite QB play to hit a 9-3 record. The pac 12 is just that bad as a whole. USC is the only team outside of us recruiting well and even then they have a few bad classes brought in from Helton. Utah is the only team i can presently say has a great and tested coach. and the only team rising as a whole is Oregon state but you also have to remember how far down they were, they aren't even close to moving up.

I won't even remotely pretend I understand roster management to give a perfect or correct answer here. If you run a 11 personnel on average I would likely say you need between 9-12 Scholarshipped receivers. I personally think WR is the least likely position to get injured so running more than 12 seems very excessive. At the current moment Oregon has Thornton, Brevard, Hutson, Delgado, Franklin, crocker and Wilhoite set to return. That gives you 7. If stephon Johnson signs with oregon, that bump you up to 8. I also like the idea running McGee as a combo player. Easily allows you to move between 21 personnel and 11 personnel. For a total of 9. To add to this, I'd like to see a decrease in 12 personnel. so unless injuries persist and depending on what DJ Johnson, Cam McCormick do I would like to never see Webb blocking ever again. Move webb to Wide out. let him compete as a tall wideout. This allows Ferguson and Matavao who proved to be better last year to obtain all the reps at TE, and hopefully we can see a healthy Herbert. The only downfall to this is it does increase the importance in 2023's class to pull in a good TE. If the coaching staff still feels the need after all of that, than let them go out and get a good WR. AZ just got UTEP Cowing. A lot of the guys on this list don't meet that definition. I'm sorry but 5 years of college experience and only 8 TD's and 1,500 YDS. Is not enough. I like Neyor from Wyoming and while It's hard to make an assessment without film Antwane Wells Jr from James Madison(FCS) is also in the portal. He will have 3 years of eligibility left and in two years has amassed 1800 yards and 21 TD's.

I agree that Butterfield looked better in the spring but that isn't all that uncommon with true freshman. As limited as it was Butterfield enrolled at oregon in january 2020, got a very partial spring(before covid) and got fall 2020. This past spring(2021) was Thompson's first practice with the team. It's pretty well known that early enrollee Freshman can take what I would call a leap from spring to fall. This is due to the fact that the freshman are not only in football, but are getting used to living on their own, being away from family and starting off at college. Add in the QB position has some of the most to learn from mechanics and playbook that it isn't all that surprising that butterfield looked better during the spring game. As an additional note on the spring game, I don't think a lot of it was his fault... His first drive stalled because of playcalling. RB rush for 2 yards, failed screen loss of yards, 3rd down(3rd-13) complete but short of the line to gain by about a yard or two. His second drive he drove the ball all the way down inside the 5(false start made it inside the 10). He had some bad passes during his game.I wouldn't deny that fact. In honesty I am not going to give the credit that others got in this game though either. A lot of the highlights were players like thorton and Franklin getting past walk on defenders for open passes. the only qb I remember making passes in the middle of the field was Thompson. as for during the season it is hard to evaluate a qb that had 15 pass attempts. He left a lot to be desired..but against AZ two of his passes were dropped by a walk on(one was a bad pass). as for his lone INT against colorado, It was a poor decision but it was also because the Walk on WR ran a poor route. The fact is as a fanbase the previous staff let a lot to be desired, we have very little knowledge about the qb's because they rarely let media or fans in to view and watch them practice, add in that back up QB's made a total of 18 passes during the season and it's really hard to know. I've seen plenty of fans hype thompson, butterfield and ashford but the truth is we don't know. we don't have enough evidence to make actual assessments of any of these players.

I know he's fresh but i can't help but wonder how Seven McGee might perform in a system like this. You could run hurry up with McGee in the slot and without changing personnel be running a 2 back play on the next down. maybe it's just me but I could see him working all over the field. I'd love to see some creativity tied in with this offense.(that is from someone who loves the ground and pound.)

I know you marked it as Mixed reviews. but overall i think this is an upgrade. Penn state was top 5 in both punt return yards allowed and kickoff return yards. so the mixed review is they didn't really have any decent returns themselves. I'd take that any day of the year vs what we have had this year. I'll also note because of the poor angles i've never paid much attention to special teams.

I mean to be fair he didn't inherit much. He had TBJ(276), Darrian Felix(666), CJ Verdell(444), and Cyrus Habibi-Likio(422). As for what left Travis Dye(987), Byron Cardwell(190), Trey benson(375), sean Dollars(143), seven McGee(151). Technically both Dye and Verdell have one year eligibility but i have no idea who will stick around. I don't think much of Mastro as a coach but you can't argue the recruited talent level at oregon isn't better than when he arrived. I also want to give him a little bit of a benefit Dye has significantly improved over his time at oregon, both in regards to not getting tripped up and his vision. **in parentheses is 247 national ranking for their recruited year.

The only argument i have ever seen for not allowing opt outs is that they want players to remain focused. Frankly I don't think that is a great point. I mean when you consider the fact that coaches are recruiting during the beginning of bowl season until just before christmas add in coaching changes and I'd argue the coaches are less focused than the players. Let them get a chance to stand with their friends and teammates for a final game. and let them be position coaches too. I mean even if Thibodaux isn't playing he is watching and maybe he can give in game advice to the backups that are now starting.

I guess I should clarify what I meant by Helf 2.0. More or less I just meant enhancing all of Helfs bad qualities. Locker room contro - pretty bad. Coaching hires - bad. Recruiting - meh. Everything that Helfrich did "poorly" Lake did even worse. Pellum and Hoke were awful hires but compared to Jon Donovan not bad. Add in that because Lake hadn't been anywhere when it came to replacing position coaches all he did was hire internally with his analysts. Recruiting(i like 247 overall due to the ease of their interface). Helfrich wasn't great and we have to remember the university was limited due to kelly/willie lyles. what baffles me is the drop in recruiting even after attending the playoffs. Helfrich wasn't a great recruiter if you could even consider him one. he solely relied on the university selling itself(which doesn't cut it). With that said, Lake was worse, as reflected on he tried relying on UW to sell itself and when you haven't won anything in 20 years that is pretty hard. Locker Room, I think helfrich's era speaks for itself. I think he is a likeable guy but was never cut to lead and this is present in the lack of control. But man between the number of players that left UW in his timeline Lake had zero control ever at UW. Overall I would definitely take Helf any day of the week over Lake. I will say I do think helf was really good at evaluating QB talent. He is definitely missed in that regard at oregon right now.

Their is so much I want to comment here because they are all such great points. To start most Oregon fan's new the hire with Lake was going to be Helfrich 2.0... He had been tied to peterson since 2012 and had never been a sole DC. The fact that UW thought to promote him says a lot about the university and jen Cohen(UW AD). As another note between cristobal and Lanning VS. Lake and DeBoer. the prior to completely understand that the most important factor in being a successful college program is recruiting. I think cristobal made enough of his own errors in the play calling and offensive design but that doesn't change or dispute the fact that only teams with jimmies and joes make the playoffs. Lake continued the legacy of peterson of treating every offer as gold. From my understanding DeBoer is doing the same. If lanning can come in and continue(giving him a break for the current class) the recruiting of cristobal and DeBoer pushes the same standard of Our Kind of Guy's than Oregon will continue to push ahead and while i don't think DeBoer is as bad at X's and O's as lake was they won't push for the conference/division. As a final note, While oregon's staff is not done so it can't be judged to date. Can we talk about UW... Specifically in the retaining of both Junior Adams at WR and Scott Huff at OL. These are not good coaches. UW's Oline has been one of the worst in conference for about 3 years. They are not fundamentally sound and consistently make errors in protection. I am so happy to see him return. As for adams his Wideouts consistently look like the classes from 2016-2018 at oregon. They have no one in the room to catch the ball and the ones that stay aren't great.

Sure Lanning could have promoted them but why would oregon promote an analyst to be position coach. especially an analyst that has never had on field college experience before. These aren't the same level of analyst that Bama gets(washed up coaches that need the school of Saban) these are young guys who need experience and I would be concerned if Lanning was retaining these guys in a manner to promote them. Many people misunderstand the role of an analyst. They are not allowed to coach the players one bit they are only allowed to give players words of encouragement. Most of their work is relegated to assisting the coordinators in film review and game planning. I'd assume Costa was probably focused on finding the patterns in opposing Defenses to help moorhead scheme for the game. All in all I think it is a big risk for a power 5 top 20 team to promote an analyst, who has never coached in college, to an on the field role. So while I don't know if Lanning offered them their jobs back I would expect them to take promotions at Nevada.

I wouldn't say that is cleaning house as much as those guys are getting promotions. Kwame who was an Analyst is becoming the SAF/Co-DC at Nevada, and Jalen was another Analyst becoming a CB coach. Nate Costa was another Analyst who is Nevada's QB coach. All in all i would portray this as Wilson raiding the oregon analyst cabinet for his coaches rather than a cleaning of house.

The last I read was that USC plans to retain him in an off the field role. If that is true and I am Lanning I would be pushing every day to obtain him. Obviously he is a great recruiter but I also think he is a great CB coach as well. Oregon should be able to pay him significantly more for being an on field coach and the tax burden will be less.

In case you didn't see, last night Thomas Graham JR played a pretty good game for the bears in his first start since in a football game since the 2020 Rosebowl. Rob Moseley with Duck football tweeted out every oregon player on that team that has since played in an NFL football game. That number is currently at 12 but when you add in Thibodeaux, Verdell, Travis Dye and likely Micah Pittman. Oregon will have had likely 16 players make and play in an NFL game. I think my question at this point is if cristobal had this much NFL talent than how did we not make the playoffs? How did we lose to Auburn, and ASU? Sure, you can blame the play calling from arroyo to some extent, but teams this talented should have beat CAL by more than 10, OSU-14, UW by 4.

I mean don't think there is a perfect answer to this. Let's look at the Pro's of starting a freshman... 1. Gets him practice before next season Now the con's 1. Risk Multiple QB's transferring out. 2. The new coaching staff isn't their to make the decision. 3. could alienate players Here is my solution to the game. Let Brown get his final start(first drive) and final finish(final drive) of his time at oregon. Look I don't blame brown at all during his time at oregon, He helped us win in columbus. He lived out his dream to be a starting FBS QB. I do blame the coaching staff(namely cristobal) for never benching him. The alamo bowl is a meh bowl, so I don't really care. Let him get his final minutes of play time and maybe he can up his canadian football stock. Also by not declaring a freshman a starter you aren't forcing a hard decision on the next head coach. Just coin flip the drives for the freshman and let them all play. This gives live game time film that will actually help Lanning as he moves forward into spring.

"I’m not questioning his ability to coach; I’m questioning whether we saw his best at Georgia?" Look I'm not going to make the argument that Georgia ever saw his best work. That is truthfully unknown and can never be answered. You could have made this same argument about chip before he went to the NFL or nearly every one-and-done in the NFL but when opportunity and money calls we should expect those around us to take it. Any other argument against that fact does not have that person's best interest at heart. This author cares more about Georgia(which is fine) than it does about Lanning.

I agree with all of your points except for the Domestic Abuse. Look I don't condone any action of abuse but the charges were dropped and he plead guilty to one charge of harassment and had home confinement for 10 days... That is the beauty of our justice system he should only beheld accountable for things he was actually found guilty of... as for if he graduated, i believe he did but i'm not entirely certain. He did make pac 12 all academic team at least once during his oregon career. as for his coaching, he has no experience on the field. maybe he could be a GA, or analyst and prove he has the chops to coach before getting paid big.

The article says aside from MC. Mclendon is the Interim head coach for the game.

I would love for james to be apart of the program. I don't know about coaching at this point. Make him a GA. Let him prove that he has the coaching chops before making him a full time coach. It's one thing to be a great player and another thing to take those feats and turn them into coaching capabilities. My only example is often times the best QB coaches are the DII/DIII players who never really had the physical acumen and had to rely on sound fundamentals to really play ball.

don Johnson has been on twitter this whole time tweeting and retweeting recruits/players and so forth. He clearly bleeds green and is a welcome on the staff. I assume he had some sort of deal with Mullens from the get go because it never seemed like he would be following cristobal out to miami. He seems like a standup guy.

Make no mistake for what I am about to say as condoning the cost of college football coaches but what they get paid has very little to do with the cost of tickets. The average cost at Autzen is ~$60 per seatgeek. multiplied by 54K filled at 80%(43.2K) for a grand total of ~2.6M. times that by the season(7 games) and oregon is pulling in 18 million a year. in tickets(I think this is a significant over evaluation. and is probably closer to 14-15M with another 7-8M in concessions. To remember this is gross revenue and not net profit. Each game has a lot of staff in the stadium the cost of the food needs factored in cost of stadium upkeep. I'd be surprised if the stadium revenue exceeded 5m after the departments cost. Football coaches are paid for at the Power 5 level almost exclusively from donors who want their team to win. That's it. We don't control the market value of it even if we think it is absolutely inflated.(it is).

I'm not going to lie, the coaching carousel has been compared to the bachelor/bachelorette this year and I would definitely argue that it is a warranted description. add in some tarmaced, some joey freshwater, a OC's girlfriends therapy monkey attacking trick or treaters, and I can't imagine why HBO hasn't already made it.

You have phrased this question perfectly for me to reflect on my cast iron collection. So to start I don't think their is a right answer.(their is a wrong answer). your options. 1. the trusty old but battle tested #8 Wagner. It is a quality all around pan. it may have a flaw or two but it has been seasoned for years and can do what you ask it to do. Think Dan Mullen, phil longo 2. The odd enameled pan by le Creuset, It's flashy and runs a unique offense. Jeff Lebby 3. the kickstarter. their are new pans every day on kickstarter. they always look great. some have been manufactured wrong and the seasoning flakes off on the first use and others live up to their potential. The only wrong answer is the Lodge. Is it a good pan, yeah. is it a pan that you write home about or tell your friends about. no. And while it can hold a seasoning alright, forget about cooking anything with acid(spaghetti sauce) because it just can't stand the pressure. At oregon I'd accept 1-3 and the reasoning behind all three is great. the wagner add's some much needed experience in the coaches room and I wouldn't blame Lanning if he wanted it. The Creuset adds much in a unique and tested offense but obviously isn't that experience. The Kickstarter is both a way to invent yourself as a head coach and add flash to the offense but it does risk failing more than 1 or 2.