Desert Duck

I will never-ever forget that. It's his first game as HC and officially, the game hadn't even started. So naturally, what play do you call? A time out, of course. Why? Because you only had all off season to prepare for that moment. Fortunately, calling a punt was not an option.

Translation: "The buck never-ever stops here."

"Utah's Cam Rising says he tore multiple ligaments in Rose Bowl" This poor kid really did a serious number on his knee... "I tore my meniscus, MPFL, and MCL." I cannot imagine that it would be wise for him to attempt to come back this season. But I do, of course, wish him the best of luck in his recovery. https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/38577335/utah-cam-rising-says-tore-multiple-ligaments-rose-bowl

Ahh... I didn't realize that Penix had these prior injuries. This is enlightening to me and explains his lack of running. And I like it!

Absolutely, Charles. Like CU, UW is getting about 80% of their yards through the air, compared to Oregon’s much more balanced attack of 60% through the air. Also, for as athletic as Penix appears to be, he hardly runs the ball. So far, YTD, he's only run the ball 8 times for 9 yards. Last year he only ran for a total of 92 yards on 35 carries -- vs. Bo's 510 yards on 89 carries. One of the reasons his rushing stats are so low is because they haven't needed him to run the ball much either. We'll see what next Saturday looks like for him as we will hopefully be flushing him out of the comfort of the pocket. But if we can get pressure on him, especially early, they're going to need a much better performance from their rushing attack.

One good thing is that YTD, Penix has only run the ball 8 times for a total of 9 yards. 80% of their offense has been from his passing game vs. 60% for Oregon. The Ducks are much more balanced. Hopefully, our defense can get him out of his rhythm early with some pressure.

Wishing him a full and speedy recovery. Not only a stud RB, but excellent receiver hands as well. Next year, he will be a force to be reckoned with. Meanwhile, thankfully we have depth and should be able to 'next-man-up' rather well.

Great article, Alex. There are so many things that I’m seeing from Oregon right now that I really like. The Defense - Even against the highly talented, dual-threat, Shedeur Sanders, our defense simply locked him down stone cold. If you look at Sanders's total YTD numbers, like BoDacious, Williams, and Penix, he is also putting up Heisman-type numbers – with the awesome exception of the Oregon game. Against the Ducks, even on the rare occasion when Sanders had time to throw, our secondary was on his receivers like stink on poo. On the day, CU’s offense put up a paltry 199 yards --- however, with 93 yards of that coming in the last 5 minutes of the game when Lanning obviously had all of our backups in. Plus, our Duck D dropped 7 sacks on a highly mobile Sanders. And if we remove the CU-Oregon stats from CU’s YTD offensive totals, the Buffs are averaging 500 YPG. Including, USC giving up nearly 400 yards to CU. I’m hopeful that the CU/USC is not an anomaly, and I don’t think it is. Someone around here recently said something like, “Stats are for losers.” I understand that sentiment, but they can also be extremely telling. Between Oregon & the Fuskies, on paper, right now, the Ducks are hands down the better team. But some of the X-factors for me are whether our Ducks will: 1) Handle what will be the loudest and rowdiest crowd they will face all year, 2) Continue to move in the right direction regarding penalties, 3) Show up and play from the actual start of the game as we did against CU (i.e., not give the puppies a 1/3-game head start as we did against the Palm Trees).. Considering that the mighty California Bears (at UW) & Arizona Wildcats put up 32 & 24 points, respectively, on the Pups over the last two weeks, I say that Oregon wins this one 38-28.

Thanks for sharing this info and awesome detail. And one other thing that I like about this specific instance is that from the time the defense made first contact with Bucky, he continued forward to gain another 11 yards.

Gang Green gave up an average of 19 ppg. And they were awesome.

One thing that I statistically like about playing UW & CU is that for both teams, about 80% of their offense comes from passing... making them much more one dimensional. Whereas Oregon is extremely well balanced at about a 60/40 passing to rushing attack... and yet, even with that kind of balance, Bo is still putting up exceptional numbers. If our defense can continue to get pressure on the QB and disrupt his rhythm like we did against CU & Stanford, I really like our chances.

I had to take a look at our @ Fuskyland record since 2013. You are correct. @ Fuskyland has been quite good to Oregon as of late. Ducks have gone 4-1 up there since 2013.

"Against CU, starters didn't play the final quarter and a half. Against stanford, the starters didn't play the first quarter and a half." Okay... that's just flat out damn funny.

10-1 these will come out for the Civil War, as we dispose of, and say goodbye to, the River-Rats.

On paper right now, I think Oregon is the better team. For me, the wild card is Husky Stadium and the loud & wild crowd that will be there. Husky Stadium, when rocking like it will be, could be the "it" factor. But if Oregon can handle the noise, block out the hype leading up to the game, and play focused for a full 60 minutes (meaning, not spot the Huskies the first 20 minutes of the game like we did with Stanford), Oregon wins this game.

Hopefully, yesterday was a harbinger of things to comes as we were signicantly better with only 2 penalties for 20 yards.

"College Football Week 5 Highlights: Top Plays, Games, Takeaways" Absolutely less than zero respect or props provided to Oregon in this ESPN piece. https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/page/gamedayfinal093023/college-football-week-5-highlights-top-plays-games-takeaways-2023 Fortunately, in 13 days, Oregon has the perfect opportunity to change this.

Brief, succinct, and right on.

For the record, I can't stand Williams as much as the next guy, but I can still state the truth and data driven facts -- which is that he is wayyy beyond just "good." This does not in any remote way detract from the fact that Bo is also arguably one of the Top-3 QBs in all of NCAA football this season. And this season we just happen to be talking about one of the best classes of QBs in college football history. Not to mention that Bo is an exceptional person as evidenced by the life he leads. And I don't know anyone who would put the Heisman over team wins... including Riley. With that being said, this Duck team is very-very special and may just have the ability to do something none of us have ever seen an Oregon team do. GO DUCKS!

After seeing what Colorado just did to USC, I'm absolutely beginning to believe. It took Colorado 58 minutes before they put up any points against the Ducks, and that was obviously against our 2nd, 3rd, and other team guys (immediately followed by our special teams saying, "screw that," and blocked the PAT). Yesterday, apparently just to make things a bit more fair or something, we kindly gave Stanford a 20 minute head start, and our defense nevertheless allowed no TDs. All while the Oregon Lumber went on to drop 42 unanswered points on the Palm Trees. So yeah... I'm seriously buying in at this point.

While it was rather nice of the Ducks to spot Stanford the first 1/3 of the game (basically, the first 20 minutes), I really hope we don't try that again this year with anyone else.

They were on Cardinal receives like stink on poo all night. It they bring that kind of play to Seattle, it should be a fun day in the Puget Sound. Ps. I think you won the prediction contest.

With 4:15 to go, time of possession seems amazing to me: Oregon - 20:09 Tree - 35:36

After seemingly sleepwalking through the 1st quarter, it's basically been all Ducks. But let's hope we don't show up like that next week in Seattle, because that would not at all be rewarded.

Let's be honest here... Williams may likely be one of those rare, unicorn like, generational guys. And they didn't feed him to bump his stats today. He was in there until the end of the game because CU just would not "go away gentle into that good night." SC, unlike Oregon last week, needed Williams in there until the very end... which speaks very well for Oregon. And I'd suggest that our own coach, who put on a "Bo-Dacious" tee-shirt for a post game interview, is promoting Bo as much Riley is promoting Williams. And IMHO, there's not a thing wrong with that.