Washington Waddler

Even a Husky can spell ‘wow’ without screwing up.

True; however, wasn’t there also a time when our Ducks were most likely an overpaid have-not?

I wonder if the same question was asked last year on a USC forum between season tickets and the Tulane game.

Clearly, the calmer, wiser authorities at both schools (if there are any left who fit that description) need to call a time out and send both programs to their rooms, and let the dust settle before approaching the possibility of renewing the rivalry. Too much boiling over right now to access the bigger picture.

Getting him might also keep Stein focused on where he is.

Still not convinced we came out flat. I think we came out ready and got haymakered by a higher ranked, super-pumped 12-0 team that felt disrespected by being a 9-1/2 point underdog to a team they’d beaten twice in a row. If anything, we were sucker punched by the odds makers. As to Deboer, next season should be telling as to how much of his current success is do the coaching/system, and how much was Michael Penix. Will he be able to plug and play, or - like Bo - will he find that Heisman-worthy QBs don’t grow on trees

Except for older Ducks, you can mention the Don James era among today’s Oregon fans without getting much of a response. Mention Oregon’s 2004-2015 12 game win streak among Husky fans, and they’ll literally stop talking to you (as happened to me on Oct 14th waiting in line at their stadium). What once drove the engine for revenge among the Duck faithful has slowly faded into history, while the puppies are still livid with rage over how we mistreated them not so long ago. I think it still feeds their fire and we saw some of that on Friday. But, what goes around . . . string enough 3 point losses together, and guess what happens?

On the replay, looks like he had his eyes on something going on to his right, and only brought his attention in front of himself about the same time the ball arrived. Happens.

Living in the kennel as I do, I come in contact with that sort of experience more often than one might think. Just this morning at my barbershop, I sat next in line to a Husky fan in the chair who was cooly assessing his teams chances to the barber based on both teams’ games with the Beavers, and didn’t think the comparison played well for his team. We bantered a bit, trading our respective views on the game, and doing it with appreciation and respect. Yes, he was, like myself, an older fan no longer confined by the passionate blinders of youth.

It’s interesting in this new world of NIL/portal-driven quarterback acquisition-recruiting to think about where in the future promising high school QB recruits are going to choose to play if top tier programs continue to relegate inexperience to the shelf while they play the revolving door game of replacing outgoing experience with someone that keeps the program from skipping a beat. Makes me wonder if small college conferences will become the developing ground for the best QB talent just so they can gain the on field experience that allows them to transfer to the programs where they originally wanted to be.

Thought I was going to be a total mess going into this game week, but for some reason I began thinking about both Dan’s ‘Oregon vs Oregon’ and Chip’s ‘Faceless Opponent’, and the puppies just disappeared. We’re going to win the last PAC 12 Championship. It really doesn’t matter who the opponent is.

Was he making them?

Giving in to desperation leads you in directions you’ve no control over. I’m still pondering my first thought at the hiring of Sanders. What is the University of Colorado thinking?

You don’t see that many quality O linemen in the transfer portal for a very good reason. They develop into high round draft choices not just by being individually talented, but by maturing as a part of a group within systems that teach them how to communicate at a high level with one another.

At 12-0 you know the puppies will be motivated by being cast as the underdog. But, if the the D line can disrupt Penix, and the O line can get its rush mojo back, it shouldn’t matter what they think.

Regarding the OSU-MSU irony, what goes around, comes around. Where else would it roost? Regarding Smith's departure, I really don’t see much difference between his move and when Chip left Oregon. Both struck while the iron was hot, and neither of them were making promises they wouldn’t keep. I’ve never understood holding coaches to some high-minded, moralistic standard that the majority of us wouldn’t keep.

The thing for us not to lose sight of is that the pups keep finding a way to win so long as they can keep it close going into the 4th where they can warp-drive enough decisive plays to pull it out. If we keep scoring and defending as we’ve been through the first three periods, it won’t matter what they do in the 4th.

Penix had a similar meltdown following the game with us. Although it’s not unreasonable to speculate regarding his emotional stability, it doesn’t seem to affect him come game time. Emotional control in a championship-level quarterback is usually a given, but the building pressure of a no loss season on his star could be causing DeBoer to break out the mental duck tape more often than he’d like.

Think we can do something about that. It’s called shock therapy — free of charge, delivered in Las Vegas.

How about the most determined fans in all of college football? No other fan base has ever had to grind it out for 24 straight losing seasons. That’s at least something for them to build on.

The insecurity of this guy (and all the others) is well earned. They know they’ve a good team that keeps finding a 4th quarter gear to steal wins, but how can you feel confident in a team that has failed to grow into a complete and dominant team? The pups look like a team that has maxed out, while OBD just keeps on growing, and finding that next 1%. I’d be nervous to if I were them.

Hate to say it, but right now the Washington schools seem to be doing a better job of keeping the emotional, bridge burning rhetoric in check enough so as to let cooler minds negotiate a continuance of their rivalry. Pullman could be blaming Seattle for their demise as much as Seattle could be screaming bloody murder over the Cougs conspiring with the Beavs for all that cash, but instead appear to be retaining focus on the bigger picture of a continuing tradition over who gets how much in the short term. Don’t get me wrong. 400 LARGE is a lot of dough. But is it worth building a Berlin Wall over?

Great read FD. What separates Stein from Dilly is their preferred method of engagement: what floats their respective boats. What drives Dilly is defensive confusion created by surprise, so his tendency is to always make the first move. Stein, on the other hand, is a chess player. All the moves are on the table; the upper hand is gained by reading his opponent’s use of them and reacting before this happens to himself. On a different note, while we all acknowledge it, we sometimes forget that it’s first the ship all our OCs are guiding, and second, the OC himself that is most important. Oregon creates a successful foundation for all the coaches who come here.

Everything Chip did had been around before in one form or another. He just put them altogether at the right time and place to capture that ‘lightning in a bottle’. Mike saw what he was; an X’s & O’s guy, an OC - period. It was the rest of us that mistook that for ‘genius’. You can’t fault Chip for taking advantage of what others mistakenly thought he was.

By which logic you have to scratch your head at ESPN’s Game Day choice of a #18 against a non top 25 team.