AnotherOD

My ten losses: 10. OHIO STATE (2024 Rose Bowl): 21-41: 34-0 to start then 34-8 at half. Nearly doubled up on offense, 500 yards to 276. 9. WASHINGTON II (2023): 31-34: #3 UW versus #5 UO. Since the first game, Oregon has looked improved and the UW has had some clunkers. Oregon was as much as a 9.5 point favorite. After a slow start, Oregon actually takes a 24-20 lead late in the 3rd. The UW scores two straight TDs in the 4th, Oregon gets a late 63 yard TD from Holden but can't get the onsides kick. 8. WSU (2003): 16-55: "Rich Cool, 4-0" the previous week, beating #3 Michigan 31-27. The following week, defending Pac-10 and #21 ranked WSU came to Autzen and were up 38-2 at half. After having no interceptions on the season, Clemens throws 4 picks and Fife throws 3 and Oregon fumbles twice for 9 turnovers. Oregon adds 12 penalties. WSU only needs 399 yards of offense to put up 55. 7. ARIZONA (2007): 24-34: It started well (39 yard TD run from Dixon). Dixon's knee buckles as does Oregon's possible trip to the National Championship game. UA's Antoine Cason has a punt return for a TD and an interception return for a TD. Oregon goes on to lose 0-16 the next week to UCLA, putting up a total of 148 yards of offense and 4 TOs. 6. CALIFORNIA (2007): 24-31: 4-0 #6 Cal versus 4-0 #11 Oregon. Gameday in Eugene. Expected fireworks don't show up early and UO leads 10-3 at half. Cal behind Longshore and DeSean Jackson (11 catches for 161 and 2 TDs) takes a late 31-24 lead. Oregon roars down the field in 9 plays in 1:17 to the Cal 5. Cam Colvin catches a pass with 0:22 seconds left and reaches for the endzone and the ball comes out, fumbled through the endzone and the game ends. Cal is later headed to the #1 spot in the country when it has to insert back-up QB Kevin Riley against OSU, while late and in position to score, Riley scrambles too long and goes down and Cal, with no timeouts, can't get its FG team to tie. 5. USC (2011): 35-38: #2 Oklahoma State had lost earlier in the day and #4 Oregon was in position to move to #3 if it beat #18 USC at Autzen. LeBron was throwing passes to Carmelo on the sidelines in the pregame. Oregon falls behind 21-7 at half on a chilly evening. Oregon gets a late score from David Paulson and a 2 point conversion to Tuinei. USC drives down the field running out the clock and gets to the Oregon 11 with 2:31 left. Marc Tyler fumbles and Oregon recovers and drives 66 yards to about the USC 20. With about 0:20 left Oregon appears to settle for setting up a 37 yard FG to tie. Maldonado misses. 4. STANFORD (2001): 42-49: Oregon's only loss in its #2 ranked finish of the 2001 season. Stanford trails 42-28 into the 4th and then outscores Oregon 21-0 by converting one of two blocked punts, an interception, and an onside kick. The interception comes on 3rd and 2 from Oregon's own 30 with 4:20 on the clock with Oregon holding on 42-41. Oregon mounts a late drive to the Stanford 37 but 4 straight incompletions end the game. 3. OREGON STATE (2000): 13-23: #5 UO versus #8 OSU. Oregon wins and it returns to the Rose Bowl, a loss and it drops all the way to the Holiday Bowl. Harrington entered the game 13-1 as a starter but throws 5 interceptions (3 to Jake Cookus). Oregon ends up with 6 TOs and 12 penalties for 132 yards. Oregon outgains OSU 471 to 399 but OSU connects on a couple early scores and builds a 17-0 first half lead Oregon can't overcome. 2 UCLA (1998): 38-41 (OT): #2 UCLA (4-0) versus #11 Oregon (5-0). After Oregon's improbable Rose Bowl run in 1994, three seasons had passed and Oregon looked to be prepared to burst back upon the national scene. Akili Smith, Rueben Droughns, Tony Hartley, Damon Griffin, Jed Weaver lead a dangerous skill position group putting up 50.6 points per game and 540 yards. Droughns himself was averaging 165 yards rushing per game at 7.4 ypc. UCLA was on a 14 game winning streak and lead 24-7 at half. Oregon scored 24 straight to lead 31-24 into the 4th. UCLA went back ahead 38-31 but Oregon tied it 38-38 with a Griffin 2 yard TD pass with 0:22 seconds left. Oregon took consecutive sacks in OT for -12 yards then threw an incompletion then a desperation interception. UCLA won it with a FG. Game is partially remembered for Drougns battling for 172 yards on 25 carries; but, playing late into the game on a broken leg (he misses the rest of the season). He loses 3 fumbles, all which lead to UCLA TDs and Oregon ends up with 5 TOs. UCLA has a FG blocked and missed another from 21. At the end of the game UCLA head coach Bob Toledo comments, "Wow, that should be worth two wins." 1. STANFORD (2012): 14-17 (OT): probably Oregon's best Chip Kelly team, sitting at #2 at 10-0 with a probable National Championship date with ND waiting (tOSU was ineligible due to Tressel investigation). Ertz lands out of bounds in the back of the endzone with 1:35 remaining. The officiating booth decides to reofficiate the play rather than look for conclusive evidence to change the call. Stanford wins in OT. Oregon wins the Fiesta and finishes #2 AP. HM: TCU (Alamo Bowl 2015) 41-47 (3 OT), Washington (2016) 21-70, Cal (1983) 41-42, Stanford (2013) 20-26, ASU (2002) 42-45, UW I (2023) 33-36, Auburn (2010 NC) 19-22 Ten wins: 10 Michigan 2007 (39-7): 624 yards of offense and 36 unanswered points. 292 yards passing and 3 TDs from Dixon and 111 rushing from Stewart (Michigan, despite starting 0-2, still finishes 9-4 and ranked #18) 9 Stanford 2010 (52-31): #4 Oregon versus #9 Stanford. Oregon puts up 626 yards of offense behind 257 yards and 3 TDs from James. Stanford and Oregon both finish 12-1. Toughest test on the way to the 2010 NC game with Auburn 8 at Ohio State 2021 (35-28): #12 Oregon upsets #3 Ohio State at The Shoe as a 14.5 underdog. 20 for 161 and 2 TDs from CJ Verdell, tOSU's Stroud in his 2nd start 35-54 for 484 7 USC 2007 (24-17): #5 Oregon defeated #12 USC (and its 3rd ranked defense) and moved up to AP#4. A reported 120+ decibels at Autzen after the Harper interception with USC driving late 6 USC 2009 (47-20): #4 USC at #10 Oregon on Halloween night. Oregon puts up 47 points, 613 yards including 391 yards rushing. USC held to 327. The beginning of the end of the Pete Carroll era at USC? 5 Ohio State 2024 ( 32-31): #3 Oregon versus #2 Ohio State with tOSU a 3.5 point favorite at Autzen 4 Colorado 2001 Fiesta (38-16): Oregon finishes 11-1 and AP #2 after defeating AP #3 Colorado. 350 yards and 4 TDs from Harrington, 3 interceptions by Steve Smith. 500 to 328 yards in total offense, held CU to 49 yards rushing 3 Wisconsin 2011 Rose Bowl (45-38): Highest scoring Rose Bowl yet at the time, Oregon's first Rose Bowl win since 1917 2 Florida State 2014 Rose (59-20): 25-20 at half, Oregon outscores FSU 34-0 in the second half. 5 FSU TOs. 639 to 528 yards advantage 1 Washington 1994 (31-20): The Pick. Its been regularly identified as the game that changed everything for Oregon football HM: Wisconsin (2019 Rose Bowl) 28-27, Texas Tech (2025) 23-0, Kansas State (2012 Fiesta Bowl) 35-17, Washington (2000) 23-16, Texas (2000 Holiday Bowl) 35-30, WSU (2001) 24-17

A couple favorites at UCLA. Blocked XP Walkoff goal-line stand 1995

After I found those times, I was still sort of curious generally how they might stack up, so I dug a bit into Georgia and Ohio State. I didn't add a post as I am not that familiar with those rosters (and didn't want to spend forever on it) and figured I would probably have a bad omit or two (that would drive a Bulldog or Buckeye fan crazy); but, it was kind of interesting to have something to compare it to. Don't quote me on any of it though 🙂. Published 100m I could find. Oregon: Gatlin Bair: 10.15 Dakorian Moore: 10.40 Carl Williams IV: 10.49 Tradarian Ball: 10.51 Devon Jackson: 10.54 Evan Stewart: 10.58 Hudson Lewis: 10.62 Brandon Smith: 10.67 Dorian Brew: 10.75 Trey McNutt: 10.82 Brandon Finney: 10.85 Koi Perish: 10.89 Davon Benjamin: 10.92 Jalen Lott: 10.99 Georgia: Micah Bell: 10.41 Dwight Phillips Jr: 10.43 Kyron Jones: 10.54 Nate Frazier: 10.58 Landon Humphreys: 10.63 Jordan Smith: 10.67 KJ Bolden: 10.76 Justice Fitzpatrick: 10.76 Craig Dandridge: 10.84 Tyriq Green: 10.85 Chauncey Bowers: 10.88 CJ Wiley: 10.91 Todd Robinson: 10.93 Ohio State: Devin McCuin: 10.28 Jaeden Ricketts: 10.50 Devin Sanchez: 10.69 Legend Bey: 10.70 Riley Pettijohn: 10.77 Kyle Parker: 10.89 Anthony Rogers: 10.89 Favour Akih: 10.90 Jay Timmons: 10.90

Just going off (not difficult to find for an article writer) published high school 100m times: Gatlin Bair: 10.15 Dakorian Moore: 10.40 Carl Williams IV: 10.49 Tradarian Ball: 10.51 Devon Jackson: 10.54 Evan Stewart: 10.58 Hudson Lewis: 10.62 Brandon Smith: 10.67 Dorian Brew: 10.75 Trey McNutt: 10.82 Brandon Finney: 10.85 Koi Perish: 10.89 Davon Benjamin: 10.92 Jalen Lott: 10.99

Absolutely. One could certainly argue this is a "new" era in college football and 2025 represents a fundamental change in how things should be viewed going forward. Time will tell. Player "development" should not be taken for granted for sure. This year, 9/10 of the top teams in overall roster composition all missed the final four: Georgia (#1), Alabama (#2), Ohio State (#3), Texas (#4), LSU (#6), Clemson (#7), Texas A&M (#8), ND (#9), and Penn State (#10). Oregon at #5 was actually the only one to make it (along with Miami #15, Old Miss #21, and Indiana #72). However, going back as far as the early 1990s, there just haven't been many "lower ranked" outliers getting through, instead the likes of Alabama, Ohio State, Georgia, Clemson. Prior to that it was other then top schools snatching up all the talent like Urban Meyer at Florida, Pete Carroll at USC, and 2001 Miami. As a simple measure of "talent" in a program, national rankings of high school recruits in roster composition has a pretty well documented correlation. If we want to point to individual errors in the system, not too hard to do: Justin Flowe, Canton Kaumatule, Ty Thompson, Jurrion Dickey, Devon Blackmon, Taj Griffin, Jonah Tauanu'u, Aaron Klovis, others. Having a roster full of top 80, and to a lesser extent top 200 recruits, just is a strong measure of overall talent in a program. I am sure there are other ways to do it, maybe by individuals going through and re-ranking players based on their own measures. I'd read it. However, for broad discussions I don't know how one gets around the "Yeah, but that is like just your opinion, man" factor. Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of incorporating post high school development in rating systems. So far, attempts to do so like re-ranking portal guys hasn't exactly blown my doors off. Former Penn State TE Andrew Olesh was a high four star and the #3 TE in the nation with not just offers but actual official visits to Alabama, Michigan, Notre Dame, Penn State, and Florida. In high school, he was listed at 6-4.5 and 215 and it was pretty much assumed he was going to need to add some size to be a college TE. He goes to Penn State and ends up redshirting and now he is already a mid three-star and #445 best player in the portal and #32 best TE? His "talent" is now very average because he probably needed to add weight, which everyone already was aware of when he was given his initial rating? National rankings and roster composition is just a fairly accurate measure someone can point to, to use in attempting to facilitate the discussion going back all the way to the days of SuperPrep, PrepStar, Parade, Lemming, and so on. As for Indiana? Sure. And for any one single player, Cignetti might pass. However, I doubt he is turning down most of Jared Curtis, Jackson Cantwell, Xavier Griffin, Chris Henry Jr, Immanuel Iheanacho, Luke Wafle, and so on if they were all willing. I don't know, maybe he would be passing on those guys to mine Tulane, North Texas, and Illinois State for gems, but my guess is he too would opt to be shopping off the top 80. [ just one opinion here and happy if others don't agree 🙂 ]

I'm expecting the Duck's overall "Blue Chip" ratio to fall from what I believe was an all-time 78% in 2025 to 71% to 72% in 2026. Sounds negative, but among the top 60 or so rated players out of the 85 counters (no longer needs to be 85 but most teams still seem to roughly be sticking to it), Oregon should be at a clear all-time talent high. Five stars: 10 Top 50: 19 Top 75: 23 Top 100: 27 Top 200: 41 If one were to throw together a best guess Duck starting 22 for 2026, and then compare it to the 2024 Ohio State/Oregon playoff game: Top 80 rated starting recruits: 2024 Ohio State: 56% 2024 Oregon: 18% 2026 Oregon (projected): 50% Top 200 rated starting recruits: 2024 Ohio State: 82% 2024 Oregon: 27% 2026 Oregon (projected): 68%

Could probably throw 2003 Igor Olshanski and Junior Siavii in there? Igor went 2nd round with the 3rd pick to San Diego and Junior 2nd round with the 4th pick to Kansas City. Haloti Ngata (1st/12th) had been set to start at one DT spot, before being lost for the season in the first quarter of game one. That I guess would technically be 3 top 36 NFL draft picks on the same front? Harmond (1st/21st), Burch (3rd/78th) and Caldwell (3rd/86th) also pretty good.

Bad defense certainly didn't help, but I would imagine it had more to do with new/young QBs learning the Duck offense, then the season ending collapse. Given the pace Kelly/Helfrich liked to play, there always were plenty of snaps, so the offense always had the ball some. TOP of course wasn't good, but it never really was back then. 2011: 25:20 2012: 28.39 2013: 25:58 2014: 27:14 2015: 27:18 2016: 26:00 Snaps by offense/snaps defended: 2011: 72.5/76.9 (-4.4) 2012: 81.4/75.8 (+5.6) 2013: 74.8/80.2 (-5.4) 2014: 74.5/78.0 (-3.5) 2015: 76.0/80.5 (-4.5) 2016: 74.3/80.8 (-6.5) My wild guess is that teams really didn't get a lot better defending it until it got widely adopted down to the high school level. Kids grew up facing it before college. Oregon's best run with the offense was arguably 2012, 2013, 2014; or, after 5 years of Oregon putting it on tape. In the back 5 years of the offense (2012-2016), the offense averaged about 2 points and 53 yards more than the first 5 years. Perhaps one could speculate: Fine tuning offensive players to system > Teams figuring it out I've kind of always attributed Helfrich's ultimate downfall not quite so much to just bad recruiting, rather having an unusually large percentage of busts and bad actors at the top 1/3 of his classes. He actually got a fair amount of guys a lot of top programs were after who also should have been a good fit for his offense, there just were a bunch of busts (among the skill guys): Jalen Brown (143), Mahalak (177), Carrington (130), Griffin (60), Jonsen (73), Lovette (121), Merritt (123), Ofodile (120), Wallace (164), Wilson (four star, top 2 dual threat on ESPN, On3), and so on (Wilson and Jonsen were top ranked dual threat QBs - never played, Taj Griffin another LMJ, Lovette and Merritt were the #3 and #4 WRs in the nation, Carrington of course gets bounced from the NC game, and so on). If we wanna go all positions, throw in names like Prevot, Austin Maloata, Kaumatule, Okun, Osay Dunmore, Leiato, Tyrell Robinson... ( I definitely have a complicated relationship with the Kelly/Helfrich era 🙂 )

Kind of a random off-season kind of question, did anyone actually ever "catch up" to that Kelly/Helfich offense that spanned 10 seasons? Thoughts? 2007: 38.2 ppg, 467 ypg, 5.9 ypp 2008: 41.9 ppg, 485 ypg, 6.6 ypp 2009: 36.1 ppg, 412 ypg, 6.1 ypp 2010: 47.0 ppg, 531 ypg, 6.7 ypp 2011: 46.1 ppg, 523 ypg, 7.2 ypp 2012: 49.6 ppg, 537 ypg, 6.6 ypp 2013: 45.5 ppg, 565 ypg, 7.5 ypp 2014: 45.4 ppg, 547 ypg, 7.3 ypp 2015: 43.0 ppg, 538 ypg, 7.0 ypp 2016: 35.4 ppg, 492 ypg, 6.6 ypp I mean, maybe there is an argument about 4-8 in 2016; but, before the wheels finally fully came off, Oregon was still averaging 41 ppg and 519 ypg (and had over 400 yards of offense in all 8 games), then finishing 1-3 averaging 25 ppg and 437 ypg. Helfrich certainly had to go; but, I doubt anyone is catching up with Oregon's offense in 2017 either if he did stay. Herbert, Freeman, Brooks-James, Nelson, Pharoah, Mundt. In the 7 regular season games Herbert was healthy, Oregon averaged 52 ppg and 550 ypg in Taggart's new offense, with a healthy Herbert and Helfrich, who knows where the offense might have gone? It still probably gives up about 50 a game though. 🙂 (As late as 2022, Chip still got 39.2 ppg and 503.6 ypg out of DTR, Charbonnet, Bobo, and Kazmeir Allen)

I was thinking Oregon's defense having a Devon Jackson at LB and a Devin Jackson at S would be tricky for announcing, and they go and top that with two Anthony Joneses. I think former Duck Anthony Jones (now also a DL) still has one year left at UCLA. So, there apparently was a non-zero shot of having 3 Anthony Joneses on the Duck DL in the same season. Then I remembered USC recently added an assistant coach from TCU named Anthony Jones... and then it was just time to stop. 🙂

A couple weeks back I was thinking about this a bit, is year-to-year pressure more player related or scheme related? So I looked it up and found, since bringing the Georgia defense to Oregon, over four seasons, both Oregon and Georgia have exactly 122 total sacks. That is about 30.5 per year. Oregon had 30 this year. In the last 8 seasons, Georgia has had between 20-37 sacks 7 out of 8 times, the only outlier being the 2021 team that had 49 sacks, which famously had 4 future 1st round NFL draft picks on the DL (T.Walker, Wyatt, Davis, Carter), and 2 future 1st round NFL draft picks at LB in Q.Walker and N.Smith (plus a pair of future 3rd round picks: Dean, Channing). On average, it suggests maybe 30-32 sacks per year should be expected from this D, based on the 12 seasons of data (a good portion of bend-but-don't-break, unless of course you get a D front with 6 future NFL 1st rounders, then, maybe QBs watch out). That isn't to say more sacks wouldn't be great, only maybe not what the scheme tends to generate (absent that obscene amount of talent). Advanced stats seem to try to move further than raw sack numbers. Advanced stats has something called "Havoc Rate" which is basically how much a defense is able to disrupt an offense by generating negative plays (pressure). It is somewhat hard to find, but one site that looks pretty good (CFBD) has the following numbers (generally a havoc rate of 20% or more is considered very good): Oregon: 2022: 15.1% 2023: 17.2% 2024: 19.3% 2025: 18.2% Georgia: 2022: 16.0% 2023: 17.1% 2024: 15.7% 2025: 15.1% For comparison, Indiana was 23.2 this year and 22.0 last year. Texas Tech was 23.3 this year (after being 13.7 the year prior). They further break the number into how much the front 7 contributes to the havoc and Oregon's fronts have been: 7.8 9.3 11.5 9.6 Georgia: 10.3 9.7 11.0 8.1 Indiana's fronts have been 14.5 and 16.0 and Tech's 15.0 this season. I think there might be some evidence in all this that Oregon and Georgia's scheme by design generates less havoc (pressure) than someone like Indiana or Tech. Borrowing from that great 2021 Georgia D (and all those sacks), its havoc rate was still only 20.2 and 12.1 for its front (very good but not Indiana or Tech good). That maybe indicates overall even great front players still trails behind an overall great pressure scheme. Well, if I am reading it correctly 🙂

Yeah, what is left of Sports Illustrated today. A "legacy brand" that essentially exists to be licensed to whoever wants to pay to attach their content to its name. ABG now owns the S.I. brand. First gave it to the Arena Group who eventually bailed and now Minute Media is trying to do something with it. You, me, Jon, and $30 million lying around and we could have been Sports Illustrated instead. I recently caught an S.I. Fox Crader article that sounded interesting. It turned out to be mostly a nothing burger of info, which wasn't great but fine. The thing that bugged me more was the article had two pictures, one of Dante Moore and one of OL coach A'lique Terry. S.I. going to write an article called "Oregon's Next Star OT is Already on the Roster (Fox Crader)", yet not get a picture in there of him? I know he didn't play a ton, but he did make it into 5 games (including the entire USC game and most of the second half of the Indiana game). S.I. regularly seems like barely trying, with "barely" having one foot out the door. 🫤

Yeah, I probably should have looked that up. In my defense, I did select for Indiana what I've always felt was the better acronym. I've always thought, "The University of _______" sounded better than "_______ University" • The University of Oregon > Oregon University • The University of Indiana > Indiana University Of course Oregon became a state in 1859 and the UO was founded in 1876, while OU wasn't founded until 1890 and Oklahoma didn't become a state until 1907. Oregon also played its first college football game in 1894 while Oklahoma wasn't until 1895. I see Indiana became a state in 1816 and Indiana University opened in 1820, while Illinois didn't become a state until 1818 and the University of Illinois didn't open until 1867. Indiana also played its first college football game in 1886 while Illinois wasn't until 1890. Are we sure Illinois didn't improperly steal UI from Indiana? (Just kidding of course, I get these things are rooted in history and tradition and I should have gotten it correct 🙂)

Aguirre to NC State (his brother is on the roster there).

A lot of people seem to be down on portal OL and I get it. I will throw in Pregnon came in and had to play on an OL with two other portal OL and was an AP first team All-American. He was good. I think that is the Ducks third AP 1st team AA OL since 1920. Over 100 years of regular OL development and two AP 1st team OL (and one of the two has been described as an absolute OL unicorn). Since the portal opened up, I think the Ducks have brought in 7 new OL and now have a 3rd AP 1st team AA OL. The Duck staff brought in a two year starter from FBS USC, and then added two G5 OL from Nevada and Texas State who they hoped to "fine-tune" or "fix" in 9 months, and these two particular OL I think (arguably) turned out to be mostly who they were on film the last 4 years. I think Harkey was 3rd team All-Sun Belt in 2024 and World was honorable mention All-Mountain West in 2024. Like all recruiting, the portal is at least in part projection. On college football boards, I see the term JAG used a lot, simply meaning "just another guy". If you bring in 3 hopefulls on the OL and get 2/3 JAGs, of course it isn't going to always look great. World and Harkey did help the team to 13-2 and into a game to have a shot to play in the National Championship. I'd say still not bad.