Duck Fan 76

To me the fact that Jacobs was planned to be a central piece of the Hawkeyes defense says EVERYTHING we need to know about him. The Hawkeyes play undeniably great "D" and they do it via player development. Holden's resume speaks for itself... the WRs next year are going to be phenomenal. We still have needs though, we need pass rush up front and that's a tough get. We also need a really smart and skilled safety to general the whole defense...

Honestly I take exception with the analysis in that article. If you grade out coordinators by where their rosters rank in talent vs where their field production is TL's defense underperformed by about 3-4 rank positions. I honestly think there's credence to the rumor that DL took a much heavier hand in the Utah games defensive prep/execution. Does that mean TL has to go? No, but he does need to improve in 2023. The defense looked confused a lot this year and struggled to make adjustments against shifting formations. That's not a talent problem as much as a coaching problem. The defense needs to do some serious off-season work to understand the systems and be able to play smart, sound, fundamentals football. We shouldn't be envying OSU's defense with the talent gap between the positions.

I think Deion is going to enhance recruiting and portal attraction for CU. He's pulling in coaches that have a proven track record of results and that combination is going to put CU on a positive bubble for more wins than 1. Of course it would be pretty hard to do worse at CU than the 2022 season. The effect of Deion at CU is going to be lots of national media coverage and multiple opposing views on Deion as a coach... so, ratings. Media loves drama and Deion IS drama so he's going to be in the CFB conversation way more than his programs win count would normally justify. Mo drama = mo buzz = mo money... This has a positive benefit for the remaining PAC teams as we're currently in media contract negotiations. Don't think Kliavkoff isn't loving Deion's media blitz and factoring that into his national viewership estimates for negotiations. Deion plus the competitive PAC play this year should give us a slight bump in the contract price I'm sure. In the end I think Deion is going to be really bad for CU football as he's not focused on the longer term program as much as the short term gains (Pete Carroll anyone?). He's going to probably leave the program in shambles and the next hire is going to have some real challenges righting that ship. I mean who really thinks Deion is going to stay in Boulder Colorado? He's driving his stock price up and my bet is he's aiming at FSU for his next stop on Deion's march to the sea. He will probably do the same thing to FSU in the end and end up getting a fat salary contract for the NFL. In my opinion he's the Carly Fiorina of CFB coaches.

I can't imagine all of the work you put into this site... I for one am extremely grateful and am appreciative every time I come here and especially when I reflect like I am now on how much I learn every visit. The community is what makes it great but you are what makes it run!

I'd have to know a LOT more to be able to weigh in here on one side or the other. On the one hand I've been in the situation where I'm mentoring very junior (under 21) employees on core values and that's a really difficult situation and often a low probability of success. On the other hand football still has dinosaurs like Urban Meyer who worship at the Paul Bryant alter not realizing that before he died even Paul Bryant regretted what he did to the Junction Boys.

LOL! Honestly the tactics he employs have proven by other coaches to have short term but fairly reliable gains. I think Coach Prime will improve CU next year for sure but it's hard not to with a 1-11 record. Their offense was anemic and I think right away he will see some gains there and get constant ESPN talking points about how coach Prime is turning around CU football. In his second year we may see some significant gains but eventually Florida St. is going to call when Mike Norvell moves on up and Prime will pull the rug out on CU leaving the next HC to deal with a real mess.

I mean sure it's possible Bo stays, he's got great advisors that will give him a feel for where he would likely go in the draft this year and that's most likely 3rd or 4th round. The question is how likely is he to improve his draft stock in the 2023 season? The O-line is going to take a step back with 4 starters leaving, they will still be good, just not likely to be as good. To make staying for 2023 a benefit for his draft position he would need to move into the first or second round. To do that he has to show something different in his game play and not just win more games. He would need to add something new to his skillset. NFL scouts aren't dazzled by outstanding college wins, they are looking at how the players play and what development still remains. They are not as interested in the teams results on the field. That's why Gonzo is going first or second round sitting on our pretty terrible defenses resume. That's why Will Levis is going in the first round even though UK lost 5 games this year. I would love for Bo to stay at Oregon and take another shot at the Heisman but I just can't see why he wouldn't head to the league and work on peaking his skillset there rather than keep taking classes and be restricted to how much team interaction the NCAA will allow.

I think Bo NEEDS to play to show the draft scouts that the ankle injury hasn't hampered him. This is Bo's last college game to impress the scouts and he deserves every minute of the game until he feels like he wants to come out. He has the combine of course but it's not the same as a real game.

I've already said it in other posts but for my money Bo goes into the draft (well deserved) and Hudson Card comes to Oregon to compete in the spring. I think Dante Moore stays committed for spring Ball and it seems like Ty Thompson stays and competes for the starting position. I mean Ty "could" enter the portal before the 45 days are up if Card comes here but he might not as well (shrugs). The second portal window is in May after Spring camp so that's also a possibility for some players. It's also entirely possible that Ty competes and wins the starting position, he has real talent we just didn't see it this year on the field.

I also know that Stein believes more in tempo control as an offensive philosophy rather than straight up-tempo and that also matches our 2022 offense quite well. I think he's a solid hire for us and he's not super likely to get snatched right away for a HC position but who knows, we thought that about KD. DL had it right when he said loosing coordinators to HC jobs is a good problem to have because it means your program is envied by others. To me the biggest question is how QB development progresses. Stein was a QB at Louisville in the early days of their program so he gets the mindset but can he develop 4 and 5 star QB talent to first round draft status? I hope so.

It's a stretch but what convinced me is that Will Stein and Hudson Card have stayed in close contact. Admittedly San Antonio and Austin are right next to each other but if he's looking to leave UT... and his mentor just got an OC role at Oregon... and Bo Nix exploded this year... and the squirrels that are watching me all the time aren't secretly plotting against me... then maybe just maybe... we have a chance.

It's good for the conference and it gives CU fans something to be hopeful for. I'm still SUPER glad we have our program, coaches and players and they have theirs.

I'm no Willie Taggart fan but he does bring value on the recruiting side... Director of recruiting? I mean if he's not an assistant or coordinator he doesn't count towards the 10. Coach Prime is also good for the PACs media contract, suddenly people all over the country will be watching CU games.

Neon being Neon and earning some "Prime time" media buzz... truth is he's going to get talent in Colorado and he will probably improve the Buffs play on the field. I mean, it's not like he kicks kickers...

This is Card's 2022 play at UT, he was playing hurt when he played this season ironically with a bum ankle that took most scramble ability away... I mean I look at the Alabama game and I see a really good arm and if he's not hobbled I see Bo...

So I'm of the opinion that Bo's playing in the bowl game to prove he's physically recovered from the ankle injury not because he wants to come back next year. Barring some serious issues with his draft stock I really believe Bo's going to the NFL. Which leads me to the topic here, who's going to compete for the QB job in the Spring? Dante Moore starting as a true freshman might sound great but I think Dante's upside is best maximized by giving him a full redshirt year to physically change as well as master CFB game speed and the Oregon offense. For my money I think Hudson Card is coming to Oregon to do in 2023 what Bo did in 2022. Is Oregon the landing spot for Texas QB Hudson Card? 247SPORTS.COM Watch the 247Sports Transfer Portal Palooza Show LIVE on the 247Sports YouTube channel, December 5th. What say you all? 2017: Was named the District 25-6A Offensive Newcomer of the Year as a sophomore 247SPORTS.COM summary

You called it! REPORTS: Oregon to hire UTSA's Will Stein as offensive coordinator 247SPORTS.COM According to Matt Zenitz of On3.com, Oregon is expected to hire UTSA's Will Stein as its offensive coordinator following the departure of Kenny Dillingham to Arizona State.

Alabama - 34, Monopoly Dude - 0

What's his QBR?...

Yup, and with this event every top 20 school in America just cleaned out their future schedules for any real competition. Oregon will likely be scheduling, Food, Colors and the guy from Monopoly from here on out.

Sometimes these rumors have validity, sometimes they don't. Unless you are really plugged in to where people get sources it's really hard to verify or weigh any of it. I'm generally going to delay interest until there's an official announcement or a story from a VERY respected journalist or two.

#1 Georgia #2 Michigan . . . #3 Ohio St #4 TCU ... I REALLY HOPE NOT!!! At least reverse Ohio St. and TCU so we don't see the rematch in round 1. Not that it matters anyway, this is like fighting over the order to ding-dong-ditch Mike Tyson's house.

To me the OC position that KD had three major areas of responsibility. 1) Calling plays 2) QB development 3) Organizing the offenses practices, schedules, etc. The assumption was that KD decided on the offensive "style" but in reality that was DL's decision. He likely asked KD in the interview what kind of offense he would want to run at Oregon and DL made that decision when he hired KD. What I mean is DL is going to pick an OC that represents an offensive play style that reflects DL's philosophy and DL plays aggressive football. So that being said I'm certain DL is going to ensure Oregon employs an aggressive offense that highlights playmakers at every position. So what do I want to see? 1) Whoever call's plays need to be able to win chess matches against really good defensive play callers. 2) QB development was costly this year. If Bo plays at 50% where do we measure the backup QB's? Football is a dangerous sport so we need QB's that can execute 3) The nitty gritty details aren't glamorous but making sure practices run efficiently is important and it's not always easy. Sure there are assistants handling details but a good plan on managing non-game time helps Oregon maximize limited player development and game prep time. Can Oregon pull a coach that maximizes all three areas? I doubt it honestly since KD didn't maximize all 3. Just consider QB development as an open question for KD's resume. Sure we got Bo, but we also got Ty and I'm not sure why Ty never got comfortable. What I would like to see is a teaming approach that maximizes the total output. Here's my crazy plan, alpha-tango: Adrian Klemm promoted to OC and his primary area of responsibility is managing the offensive staff and teaching the heck out of the O-line. I would give Adams the play calling duties and the Co-OC title then put him up in the booth. It's a stretch because he keeps coaching the WR's but he's proven quite adept there. He's going to need help calling plays and Oregon can spend some money here and hire an offensive analyst that works with Adams and ensures they are ready EVERY game, EVERY down. Lastly I want to see Oregon hire a devoted QB coach that can make sure we get absolutely everything out of our future QB's, especially Dante Moore.

Daren, first let me say that I truly appreciate the article you wrote for us and I think you've tapped into a really important theme not just in football but in 21st century society. Books galore are literally (pun intended) being written on this subject although too few in my opinion focus on football specifically. Let me say right out in the open that I'm a football loving math nerd. In fact my background is as a data scientist and I routinely work with AI/ML algorithms. I would like to politely enter the discussion on the topic at hand and wish to do so without pissing anybody off. ("hope in one hand...) "Did analytics cause the decision for Dan Lanning to go for it late in the game with a 4th and 1 from his own 29-yard line? He doubled down on his 4th down from his own territory call against the Huskies. He wanted to prove that going for it in your own territory is the right thing, and he failed." More on this statement later. Let me open with agreeing with the theme of your statement that going for it on 4th and 1 from our own 29 was the wrong call in a tough rivalry game. My position on data analytics in sports is a bit more nuanced and to explain it I need to get some history out on the table. Mathematicians have been studying games for a very long time. The famous mathematician Blaise Pascal helped to discover the concept of "expected value" around 1650 and that discovery has underpinned optimal strategies for games that revolved around chance ever since (dice, cards, roulette, etc.). There would be no professional gamblers without this area of math as games of chance that pay out are purpose built to favor the house. There are a lot of mathematicians employed in Vegas working tirelessly to stay ahead of these developing counter strategies. The science of games really took a major leap forward however in the 20th century. John von Neuman published a revolutionary paper on the theory of games of strategy. Along with Alan Turing, von Neuman is the Einstein level genius that invented the modern science of computers. His theory on games of strategy was established as the new field of study named "game theory" and was a heavily funded area of research by the 1950's due to the cold war. The US and Soviet governments spent BIG money trying to figure out what was the optimal strategy for a nuclear armed power and game theory and computer simulation was the primary methods employed. The obvious concern was that "going with the gut" would get everyone killed. Eventually it was game theory that proved that nuclear conflict was in reality a no-win game and both countries separately arrived at the conclusion to agree to arms control discussions. That's an oversimplification of course but the point is game theory occupied some of the greatest minds of the 20th century. That's all fine and dandy but what does it have to do with football? My point with the nuclear discussion was to say that game theory is pretty well developed and it's not a hair brained flat earther scheme sitting out on the dark web. In fact it quickly (1950's) moved into the area of strategic games of pleasure and almost nobody was happy with that. Well maybe some math nerds. Everyone over age 10 mostly understands that Tic-Tac-Toe isn't a very fun game to play, the reason? If both players are paying attention nobody wins. In fact game theory proved that Tic-tac-toe was unwinnable if both players play an optimal strategy. When a proven optimal strategy is found for a game we call it solved. Connect four, battleship, checkers are all solved games. All of these games however have something in common, they are deterministic zero sum games with perfect information. Meaning if I take a move in the game I always get exactly that move (deterministic). Zero sum means there are no cooperative solutions where both players win, tie counts as a mutual loss. Perfect information means you can see every piece on the board exactly at any point in time. There are deterministic zero sum games with perfect information that we haven't solved such as chess and go. The reason they aren't solved is the number of possible moves is to big to account for and we haven't found patterns where we can reduce those possible moves to a manageable number for an algorithm to work on. That doesn't mean however that game theory isn't used to win these games. Before checkers was a solved game we had developed computer algorithms that could beat any human player in the world. In 1996 Gary Kasparov lost the first round to IBM's deep blue chess computer which was the first time a human chess champion ever lost to a computer. Kasparov battled back to win the match 4-2 and said "... I sensed a new kind of intelligence". In 1997 he lost the match to deep blue and today the worlds best mostly refuse to play computers as they find it demoralizing. Sports in general are a LOT harder for computers to form winning strategies with. They are stochastic games instead of deterministic meaning when I call a jet sweep sometimes I get a jet sweep and sometimes I get a fumble. Perfect information is debatable but what I can say is that there are a lot of hidden variables for a football player. Is the RB going to accelerate into the gap at 7 m/s^2 or did he go out on the town last night and today it's 6 m/s^2? Sports in general might have something that "looks like" a player turn (aka a down) but the play itself is real time so observing variables in real time is in itself a very hard problem. My point is we aren't there yet where computers are spitting out the "perfect play call" given all observable data. Will we ever be? Almost certainly barring human extinction. When? That's really hard to say any we have a word for people that predict when algorithms will accomplish some goal, "marketing". The truth is innovation comes in bursts and they are mostly unpredictable so we could be 5 days or 5 centuries away from that capability. It's why full self driving cars is a bad investment, the technology has promise but it's not quite there yet so keep your hands on the wheel. Baseball saw the rise of data scientists with Sabermetrics and it's proven to be a competitive advantage for teams but not as big a one as huge salary pools. Football absolutely isn't baseball. Baseball is checkers and Football is Starcraft. Statistics in baseball are more relevant due to the highly repeatable situational effort (pitches, hitting, fielding, etc.). You have a pitcher literally on an island performing a task. A batter trapped in a box countering the pitchers move. It really does lend itself quite well to stochastic methods in game theory. Even so sometimes players get the yips and the data models fail. Does all this mean that Football is immune to data analytics? Unfortunately no, it doesn't. Data analytics is a very useful tool for making competitive decisions of all sorts. Business uses it, the DoD uses it, the Yankees use it, Manchester United uses it and so do the Oregon Ducks. The real key here is understanding that data analytics is just one tool in the box and while it has a purpose it's not a swiss army knife... at least not yet. Now I return to Daren's quote "Did analytics cause the decision for Dan Lanning to go for it late in the game with a 4th and 1 from his own 29-yard line?" Daren answered this question himself "He wanted to prove that going for it in your own territory is the right thing, and he failed." He in this instance is Dan Lanning and the fact that he wanted to see a particular outcome other than just winning the game means he DIDN'T use data analytics to make the decision. He used his emotions and possibly justified it with ad hoc data analytics. How the human mind generates a decision is extremely complicated and we absolutely don't understand it. We do however think we might understand some of it and if you're interested in getting a non-technical overview it can be found in the book "Thinking Fast and Slow". The main idea is that "slow" rigorous logical reasoning is extremely calorically expensive (mental exhaustion anyone?) and while it's a competitive advantage in nature in some situations over-thinking will actually get you killed. Enter the "fast" thinking of the human "gut" that we came pre-equipped with. Fast thinking takes a lot of logical short cuts and arrives at a cheap but usually right answer for areas where the individual has a LOT of experience. The idea then is if you are doing something you are an expert in, don't overthink it just make the call and move on. If you are in new territory you should slow down and proceed cautiously. This rule of thumb, follow your gut, is generally speaking the optimal solution for humans. Where the problem can arise is that thinking "fast" will sometimes make errors. In the case of the optimal nuclear strategy those errors have devastating costs. How do we avoid them? We force ourselves to slow down and think it through when the risks are too high. Game theory, data analytics, computer simulations, computer decision algorithms are all just tools that are meant to help us slow down and think it through. In the end they are just tools (for now anyway) and it's how the people in charge use them that matters in getting to the right situational decisions. This concept is called human-machine teaming and we've been using it since we learned how to make pointy sticks. The stick isn't the thing, it's the hand holding it, the eye aiming it and the mind deciding on what to do with it that has mattered. The machines have certainly gotten fancier but we really haven't. Same hand, same eye, same mind. In football when it's 4th and 1 on your own 29-yard line and you are a new head coach late in a competitive rivalry game you are in an area of devastating consequences. Those are exactly the times you need to force yourself to take 15 seconds to slow down and use some tools to help you make the right decision. Data analytics is one of those tools and the danger is that the "thinking fast" system never stops so it's already made a call on what to do. It says "go for it" because we didn't get here without being aggressive, aggressive has paid off for us. The hardest thing to do in that moment is to force yourself to be aware that part of you has already decided and the calorically efficient thing to do with an exhausted mind is to use a ready tool to tell yourself a story on why that decision is the right decision. This is hard stuff. This is hard stuff for football coaches, this is hard stuff for squad leaders in the Rangers, this is hard stuff for me when I'm debating on writing 2k words on the forum or getting started on that project I'm supposed to be working on. It helps to work with people you respect that can challenge your instincts and give you pause when you have a tough decision. Mistakes will happen, mistakes were made.

We've posted a few times before that this was the Achilles heel for Oregon and they are right in calling out flashes of great play but the consistent outcomes was poor defensive play on the field. I think the defense played confused for much of the season. Go back and watch other PAC12 defenses with much less skilled athletes react to Oregon shifting offensive formations. The defense shifts fluidly with every player knowing how to adjust. Oregon's defense struggled to align and get the right assignments when offenses shifted formations. What success Oregon had on defense usually aligned with the defense getting set correctly and coverage around the ball being executed correctly. In those situations Oregon's better athletes made amazing plays. Think about that for a second, it should be extremely rare that Oregon wasn't set correctly and executing the correct coverage... I really think this is what DL was alluding to when he said in multiple press conferences that the "coaches need to teach it better" and Oregon's defense is "closer than you think". If Oregon's defense had gotten there by game 3 this season would have been the one but the defense never seemed to get it. A team can be thought of having four phases: Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing. Storming is usually thought to be a conflict stage but it doesn't have to be an ego competition. Storming can simply be a cooperative team that is failing to break the larger goals down into smaller achievable tasks. This issue can be sourced from many elements of the team and I don't know for sure what happened on the team. I can say however, that if the leadership doesn't communicate well the team has little chance of absorbing the plan let alone executing it correctly. Teaching defenses is a very difficult task as the players have to be at or near the same level of understanding to coordinate play on the field.