AnotherOD

It certainly will help if the Duck offense comes out and scores TDs on its first three drives like last season. It would take quite a while to look up; but, I'd imagine that isn't something Penn State gives up at home often to anyone either.

As a Duck fan, I was pretty happy to escape the 2024 B1G Championship game with a "W" and no major injuries and at the time mostly looked forward to the playoffs rather than read a bunch of post game discussion. I recall some talk (including here on OBD) that was essentially "exactly how bad is this rush defense?" Penn State indeed ran for 297 yards on the Duck defense at 8.7 ypc. 10 of their 34 rushes went for 10+ yards, including rushes of 41, 32, 26, 24, and 22. That's with Harmon, Caldwell, Burch, Uiagalelei, Tuioti, Boettcher, and Washington in its front. That's against a Penn State offense that wasn't exactly hiding what it wanted to do. On the year, it was going to run one of their two RBs: Allen or Singleton (or run TE Warren); or, throw a pass to one of those 3, a fairly remarkable 64.5% of the time (581 out of their 901 running attempts or completed passes were to Warren, Allen, or Singleton). In the championship game, that hit 74.1%. Despite entering the 4th quarter down 14, PSU didn't exactly abandon the run, keeping a roughly 50/50 split. Does the defensive scheme look like it will approach PSU differently this year? Does the talent so far look much better with the Duck box defenders? PSU had more success moving Oregon's front with double teams last year than any other opponent, will that repeat itself? Does the staff appear less loath to commit more resources to the box if it needs to than in the past? Many questions.

The Smart/Lanning approach seems to work best with a monster elite 330+ pound future NFL NT. While far from an unknown last season, I still felt Jamaree Caldwell was a bit of an unsung hero last year. This year the defense has three young guys who fit the profile but are still finding their way. The staff didn't seem to love anything in the portal at NT above the young guys so maybe that is promising. Maybe some of it is simple growing pains. The rise of the Kirby Smart defense was (obviously) greatly aided by having 6 future NFL defenders to put in the box. The Georgia staff finding how to best leverage that advantage might have been much of their "secret sauce" rather than anything scheme (and that isn't at all a put down, rather good coaching). Penn State obviously has a pair of good backs. Allen so far is 34-273 at 8.0 ypc. Singleton is 41-179 at 4.4 ypc. (Penn State so far has been 51% run). Maybe "mildly concerned" if Penn State can methodically rush the ball and put together long drives, keeping the Duck offense on the sidelines. I'm sure Penn State will be happy to try to play a game limiting Oregon to 2 possessions per quarter and not shoot it out.

I just realized I haven't seen A'Mari? (Edit) There he is next drive.

Oregon 49-9 2 TOs 4 Sacks 303 Yards

Has to still be Kevin Willhite (1982), no?

Well said. Though some might argue UCLA having Sam Gilbert and a lucrative NIL program as early as 1964 helped too 🙂🙂

Cristobal's 2020 class. It still has 5 guys in year six of college ball: • Robbie Ashford (Wake Forest) • Kris Hudson (Arizona) • Justin Flowe (UNLV) • Jaylan Jeffers (UCLA) • Jonathan Denis (Louisiana Tech) Very mixed results for a class ranked #14: Noah Sewell seems to be doing well with the Bears, TJ Bass is a backup OG for Dallas, Harper and Manning were contributors at Oregon, I think Bennett Williams is playing in Canada. I think like 17 out of the 22 commits either transferred or washed out.

"In what capitalist enterprise does an entity that invests more money in its product and receives a better return than those that invest less agree to split its share equally with less successful competitors? Where and when this model has been tried out, entire economies have failed." I've always viewed team sports a bit differently. When you go full capitalism, you tend to end up with a few big winners capturing the market and maybe a few small niche or bargain brands gobbling the crumbs. Sports at its root is about competition and if that is nearly destroyed by allowing a few top schools have insurmountable resources, the other 120 schools will become the Washington Generals. With college sports people pay to enjoy that competition. With a stapler, no one is paying to enjoy the stapler manufacturing companies battle it out to see who can build the best stapler, they just want their papers stapled together dependably as cheaply as possible. Under Riley, Oregon State had some good teams. They actually were even decent as recent as 2022. Excessive media influence, NIL, and the portal have reduced Oregon State to a unwinnable game against Oregon next week. I mean, its nearly impossible to come up with a scenario Oregon loses this game. Just keep give more resources to the top teams and college football is going to be 8 Ohio States, 8 Miamis, and 120 Wake Forests. An alternative is recognizing top teams already have a huge advantage and work towards "a rising tide lifting all boats". NFL style. The top college football programs seem to be doing fine right now. Everyone else? Go check out the Oklahoma State forum and see what they are thinking their next decade is going to look like. With no balanced ownership, no true partnership with the players, or meaningful governing bodies, its easy to see the tendency for a money grab.

It would have been more than just an amazing block. On Nov 17, 2012, Dakorien would have been 5! (Sorry couldn't resist) 🙂🙂

I am sure there will still be a few growing pains here and there. I am more worried that DM is going to be so good (with a so far mixed predicted NFL QB draft class) that the NFL is going to come hard at him. Before the first snap, a good season and a return for 2026 seemed a possibility. Already it seems much less likely.

Was Skattebo for Dillingham as Penix was for DeBoer?

I guess this goes pretty deep into the "holding a small grudge" category; but, haven't been a huge Kirk Ferentz fan since 2004. Bellotti and staff went all out recruiting that year. For the time, Oregon really pulled out all the stops, pursuing top recruits all over the country, big "recruiting weekends" (I think this was the year Oregon using the private jet for recruits became a thing). Oregon went on to finish #12 in the country largely behind the De La Salle group, a huge success at the time; but, it was in on a number of top kids that would have really caused a stir if Oregon landed them (I am remembering names like Marshawn Lynch, Phillip Mbakogu, Chilo Rachael). Well, Oregon had gone all the way to Iowa and gotten interest from consensus five star LB Kyle "Bonecrusher" Williams and another highly rated recruit (I am thinking DL Ryan Bain). Prior to LOI day, Oregon was producing a bit of a buzz in the college football world, being in on so many top kids. A journalist even contacted Ferentz and he went on record in an interview saying something pretty close to (this is a paraphrase): "I don't know what they are doing, coming all the way out here talking to "our" kids, wish we had that kind of money to burn". Now this was before either kid had committed. "Our kids" just meant kids from the state of Iowa. Like it was crazy for any program outside of the "blue bloods" to even dream of recruiting nationally. Now, given what happened with "Bonecrusher" (to this day listed as Iowa's highest all time rated recruit), a series of violent assaults in 2006 that landed him 37 years in prison, maybe it's time to forgive Kirk? To Kirk, it appears Oregon "thinking big" in recruiting was apparently almost absurd. That decision seems to have worked out ok for Oregon.

Oregon 44-9 1 TO 4 Sacks 281 Passing Yards

Benson certainly could be a huge wild card, that might pay unexpected dividends this year (and possibly even next if he gets his second JUCO season back). Lily Crane even wrote an article for SI.com called: "Oregon Duck's Malik Benson: One of College Football's Most Overlooked Players?" For those unfamiliar, Benson played every game for two season for JUCO powerhouse Hutchinson CC in Kansas. He caught 97 passes for 2,152 yards and 21 TDs there, and emerged as the #1 overall JUCO recruit and a mid four star committing to Alabama. His first year there he played in all 14 games but only ended up with 13 catches for 162 yards and 1 TD in a role as sometimes WR3. He transferred to FSU, presumably looking for a bigger role, then hurt his foot in their Spring game. From there he played in all 12 games of FSU's unhappy 2-10 campaign. He was their second leading WR with 25 catches for 311 yards and 1 TD (with the highest per target success rate, second highest yards per target, and second highest explosiveness rate among their WRs). As Solar points out, he ran a blazing 10.4 in high school and I've found a couple places giving him praise for "polished route running". Other reports have used: "explosive", "a slippery open field runner", "good balance and the ability to break tackles", and "a special athlete with major big-play ability". His somewhat limited impact so far at the FBS level? Described as being behind Jermaine Burton (Cincinnati) and Isiah Bond (Cleveland) at Alabama (and possibly not the best fit for the offense Alabama was running for Milroe); and, just being caught up in everything going wrong at FSU. I also found one note from FSU in 2024 (for whatever it is worth), similar to what was sometimes expressed in regards to Evan Stewart last year, that he often appeared on film to break open in the deep field, but for whatever reason, seldom received a target.