Nevada Dawg

Earlier in Talkin Season I implored Duck fans not to heap so many lofty expectations on Lanning right away because first-year head coached make bonehead mistakes at times. MC did it, Lanning admitted to it today, and Kirby Smart lost a game for Georgia in his first year due to clock mismanagement. It happens folks! Judge DL on the results of year 2or 3 rather than expecting him to bring home all the bacon in year 1.

Forgot my score. I say Dawgs 38 Ducks24.

I pretty much agree with your logic here but would not be surprised if the game a bit closer than 44-20.

I think it is fair to say that OC Todd Monken will emphasize whatever the Oregon defense is giving him. If the Ducks overload the box to stop the run, the TEs may have a very big day. Several will be on the field to combat a stacked box and quick completions to loosen things up should be quite effective. Two of those TEs (Bowers and Arik Gilbert) can also function effectively as wide receivers and have excellent ball skills downfield as well. Lanning knows all this, as well as the fact that Monken is a master at scheming so as to take advantage of what the opponent is showing on defense. Those big, talented TEs are just one more weapon that will give Defensive Coordinators fits.

Your point is acknowledged and I may re-think my prediction after the two Pac-12-SEC games on June 3. An impressive win on the road at Florida in the heat will bolster Utah's standing nationally to be sure. But...The Ducks now have a coaching staff that will be pretty good at making in-game(and with respect to last year's Utah debacles) between-game adjustments--certainly better than the few adjustments I could ever detect in the MC administration. Plus, don't the Ducks get Utah in Autzen this year? I'd treat the Utah game as a grand opportunity rather than than a dreaded encounter.

Fair to say I think that the target article here is highly worthy of being ignored. The Ducks are a quality team and will win their share of games this Fall. In fact, I am picking them as PAC-12 champs this year. I think their only serious roadblock is Utah ( assuming no colossal screw-ups such as the Stanford nightmare last Fall).

Interestingly, Kirby Smart said pretty much the same thing today after Georgia's first scrimmage today. Kirby is a defensive-minded HC and says , every year, that the offensive is ahead of the defense after scrimmage 1, even last year with that incredibly dominant defense the Dawgs had. Lanning is a defensive-minded coach. Who was his mentor for the past three years? Ergo, Lanning's assessment of relative balance after scrimmage 1 was very predictable. Also, I am not saying that a decision on the QB starter for game1 has been made, but there are numerous advantages to public comments suggesting that nothing is set in stone at this point. If you pull out paper and pencil and start listing them, I'd bet that you can probably think of 3-4 such advantages with few, if any, problems. Now how many of you still use pencils and paper these days, lol?

As someone who has been called out a couple of times in the past (once when I didn't agree at all with the point Charles was making) I do appreciate that he takes the time to keep this blog civil. There is nothing worse in my opinion to have a very interesting thread become intolerable by a couple of weak-ego commentators who get into it like a couple of 8-year-olds on the schoolyard. There are times when I have had wanted to post on this site when my opinion was so at variance with one or more other participants that I saw almost no way to state my views without starting a fight. Sometimes it is because I haven't the time to carefully compose a post so as to minimize the likelihood of conflict. Suffice to say that may be on me, but I do respect the rules by which I have agreed to abide. And political posts: Hurrah for the ban on that type of poison! We are fans, not partisans.

If the Ducks defensive line transfers are as good as folks have claimed, then they should be noticeably better than they looked in those Utah disasters last year. And they better be. Otherwise Georgia will pound the rock all night. I suspect that Lanning will load the box early and often in the game to try to force Georgia to throw the ball. Of course, that becomes easier to do if Bennett gets the ball out early to any of the three monster tight ends, all of whom have great ball skills and are, quite frankly, match-up problems for defenders. I think we see a lot of cat-and-mouse explorations (by both sides) in the first quarter of the game in the Benz.

As someone who lost his wife six and a half years ago to the horrors of uterine cancer, I shed a tear for Olivia's family and wish them all the best.

I think that Kirby will not be thinking too much about the Ducks during the first two weeks of fall camp because he has to devote a lot of attention to filling holes created by the departures of 15 dudes to the NFL. He is always lazar focused on his own during Fall Camp. Yet I can't totally disagree with the theme of your post as there are surely several GAs and a couple of paid analysts that are already focused on Oregon as we speak. One thing I can assure you is that Kirby and staff will be taking this game and the Ducks every bit as seriously as they did with Clemson last September and will be trying to give their best shot on September 3.

I acknowledge your point Drex and don't mean to be overly argumentative, but college football I think has changed drastically since Chip's early days at Oregon, and I'm not sure that the kind of roll he and the Ducks had then is even possible any more with a first-year coach. We'll see, I guess, but as a Dawgs fan, with the Ducks as my second favorite team, I hope the roll begins after the date in the Benz on September 3.

Great article! I think I anticipated the enthusiasm of CDL and the reactions of the Duck Nation when I said in one of my first posts that you were going to love this guy. I have said this before and will say again that he will field a good product and have his kids sky high--a characteristic I never really saw during the two years watched CMC's teams. Some of you may be too high on a first-year coach who will make mistakes (they all do). So don't saddle him with unrealistic expectations.

Hey David, I profess to be surprised on perusing this board that many Duck fans are as obsessed about recruiting rankings as SEC fans. Everyone is so stoked about landing a 5-star, yet it may interest some to know that a fair number of such recruits end up playing far below their high school recruiting rankings in college. I get much more satisfaction out of the 3-stars who come in, work heir tails off for 3-4 years and end up being taken in the first three rounds of the NFL draft. Some coaching staffs are great at identifying these hidden jewels on a regular basis. Kirby Smart tells his incoming recruits that they all have 0 stars as college entrants and how well they learn and practice is the primary factor determining how often they end up seeing the playing field for game action.

YESSSSS I am so ready!!!

I listened to the podcast in question today and do not remember hearing the podcaster say the Dawgs would shut the Ducks out. He is often prone to exaggerate and may have made that claim but I often tune out his pontifications. Case in point: Our podcaster dislikes Nick Saban and tries to convince us that Saban resents Kirby Smart big time. I have it from multiple sources that they are actually quite friendly and genuinely respect each other. I had each of these guys in class (25 years apart) and my assessment leads me believe that they are the kind of men who would get along. Podcasters, I have learned, often should be taken with a grain of salt.

I still remember as a grammar school student listening to Russell and his San Francisco Dons playing on AM radio. Those Dons teams got me following college basketball and interested in the NCAA tournament. Within only a few years however, while Russell was winning more NBA titles than any other player in history, John Wooden and his Bruins were taking over college basketball. Great memories for a young kid.

This is terrible news not only for Spencer's family and the Duck nation but for college football fans everywhere. Rest in Peace young man.

I think that Farrell, who is very controversial in the opinion of recruitniks that live recruiting, is vastly undervaluing Arch's understanding of the game and ability to read defenses at the line of scrimmage. These things are not really necessary for 7 on 7 drills at the camps. Arch is good but not great at the physical aspects of the game. I've heard that Georgia's OC Todd Monken values a QB's understanding of the game as much or more as the person's raw physical attributes and athleticism. That is why he was all in on Arch. There were probably at least five QBs in the 23 class with better physical attributes than Arch. Heck, you guys now have a commitment from one of them.

Hey David, all is good here. My post was not intended as a shot at you but only as a piece of information. I do agree with you that the Benz in Atlanta is hardly a neutral site. I don't set gambling spreads but I would bet that the site more favorable to the Dawgs is worth about 6 points of of the 17-point spread set for that game.

Kirby Smart has already said that he'd love to play a game in Autzen. And although some of these series may not be played given conference realignments, Smart had scheduled a half dozen or more home and homes with college football bluebloods over the next 8-10 years. Georgia fans want these games and have demanded them. Now Alabama...that is a different story unless home and homes that I don't know about have recently been scheduled be the Tide

Definitely a big get! Congrats Ducks.

I haven't followed very closely, but saw something suggesting that Phil Knight's preference is that the Ducks end up in the SEC. Anybody know what gives here? I have subsequently seen on SEC blogs that Oregon to the SEC is real possibility. I would love to welcome the Ducks but have trouble seeing that as the best course for the team solely due to travel logistics. I do believe that were the Ducks suddenly immersed into the SEC they could hold their own in most major sports. But that seems like a radical move to me. Anyone else hearing any smoke of this kind? Just curious.

There is an element of truth to the quest for the all mighty dollar being a stain on the game. But... I am a big fan of settling who is number 1 competitively. It is an imperfect metric but one that beats the h--l out of poll determined championships and will spark intense interest when playoffs are expanded. I'll just say that the competition-based championships work just fine in NCAA basketball and baseball and has for decades. These tournaments have only become more popular as they have become larger. I am a fan of preserving as many traditions as feasible however.

Were I a Duck fan first and foremost I would prefer playing in a merge with the Big-12 to the B1G (which I think is overrated in both football and basketball. Whomever wins the championship of such a conference is definitely going to the playoffs and, in a 12 team playoff, the runner-up likely goes as well.