OregonDucks

Unless Alabama is now 8-4 because they have to replace Mercer or Western Kentucky with a Texas, Ole Miss, Florida, et al. (Alabama did lose to Vanderbilt, a bad Oklahoma team and a mediocre Michigan team last season so there are very few gimmes, especially on the road, in conference play.)

LOL. Oregon football enters the 2025-26 season as the defending B1G football champion. In fact, Oregon has never lost a B1G conference football game and has never finished lower than first place in the conference. I know that doesn’t make any difference heading into this season but no other B1G team (including the mighty Buckeyes or Wolverines) can say this and it’s hilarious that Oregon can make that claim after the B1G nearly passed on the University of Oregon during conference realignment in favor of the LA schools. Go Ducks. Defend that B1G football title!!! Back-to-back champions sounds nice.

Thank you for the really early look ahead. As you admitted in the article, we don’t know how the talented younger players fit in to the playing rotation or how the players on the NFL fence will perform and be evaluated. Hopefully, some of the talented underclassman come on hard this year and make a significant impact or at least show flashes of their potential for next year. IMO, the biggest determining factor for 2026 will be how our QB develops this year and whether he returns in 2026. I’m assuming that whomever the QB is this year will have some growing pains (hopefully it doesn’t cost Oregon too dearly). However, if they improve steadily throughout the year and are one, if not the top QB, by the end of the season and they decide to return in 2026 to make a run at another national championship that could cause a lot of the players on the NFL fence to come back to Eugene, as well as attract some transfers and high school studs.

If Oregon can’t beat Montana State with their second or third string QB, I would be concerned about this season.

I can understand why you and other don’t like/respect Jim Harbaugh (JH). However, as a Ducks and Niners fan, I believe he is one of the best football coaches in the game. He has won everywhere he has been, including Stanford. JH brought the Niners to the brink of the Super Bowl championship. Hopefully he can help Justin Herbert win one with the Chargers. However, JH has a very abrasive personality and is extremely competitive (I used to love watching the hate between him and Pete Carroll LOL). I don’t doubt that he knowingly cheated but it was probably just a matter of time before he wore out his welcome in Michigan.

My issue is the inconsistency and lack of transparency. The NCAA should have clear and consistent penalties for the severity of the infraction applied equally across all member institutions (take the college team name/mascot out of the equation). Would Texas have received the death penalty, if it did what SMU did? Alabama? Ohio State? Notre Dame? USC?

FYI, both John McKay and John Robinson are Oregon Ducks and played football in Eugene, Oregon.

I don’t like the idea of automatic qualifiers and believe that you should put the “best” or most “deserving” teams in the playoff field. However, I do believe that you have to weigh the strength of schedule when deciding who the most deserving teams are because college schedules are not balanced. The college basketball tries to do this and football should be no different.

“The SEC is different. The Big Ten, you’ve just got your big three: Michigan, Ohio State, Oregon. That’s it. Penn State? They’re mediocre.”

“Oh, and how about this: The playoff would have featured its first four-loss teams. Auburn (2016), Stanford (2017) and Texas (2018) were four-loss teams ranked high enough to crack a 16-team playoff.” I really hate the direction college football is headed. It’s all about $$$ - rivalries, tradition, the pageantry and fans be damned. 1) Start playing games on Thursdays, Fridays, early and late night. 2) Break up traditional conferences and consolidate regardless of geography and traditional rivalries all for TV money. 3) Allow boosters to pay college athletes an unlimited amount of money to come to and remain at their schools. 4) Set up a transfer portal to create an unrestricted free agency for every athlete, every year. 5) Expand the playoffs watering down the regular season even more. Now it’ll be like every other professional season. Four-loss teams making the playoff - give me a break. If you lose a quarter of your games, you don’t deserve to go to the playoffs. I’d rather they throw in some mid-majors instead, just to make things interesting. At this rate, I’ll start to look for other things to occupy my Thursday nights, Friday nights and Saturday from 9am PT to after midnight.

My heart goes out to the young man. This will be a big blow to the talented, but unproven Oregon receiver room. I was hoping that ES was going to have his “breakout” season in 2025-26, improving his consistency and getting 1,000+ receiving yards this season before being selected in the 2026 NFL Draft. I hope he keeps his head up and continues to be a leader on the team as he works through the grueling rehab ahead.

I personally don’t believe it’s as much as not scouting ourselves as not scouting and being prepared for adjustments that the opponent made during the season. And that applies to both sides of the ball.

Great post. It’ll be interesting to see how the member schools and the SEC/B1G conferences react to potential uneven revenue distributions, once the TV money plateaus and the top revenue generating teams start pushing for unequal revenue shares (e.g., Alabama, Texas, Ohio State, Michigan). USC (PAC-12) and Texas (Big XII) both pushed for bigger slices of their conference’s revenue pies before leaving their respective conferences. Those schools are running out of places to go but you can be sure it’s only a matter of time before they start asking again. I wouldn’t be surprised if the SEC/B1G cooled on FSU and Clemson, after all the shenanigans they pulled. I hope the B1G pursues ND and UNC instead.

Would the SEC ever have done this to Saint Nick at Alabama?! It’s almost criminal that Georgia has back to back schedules like this. I hope that Coach Smart has lit up Sankey for the SEC scheduling. It’s hard enough to make the playoffs but it almost seems like the SEC is trying to give other teams a chance. Maybe Texas negotiated a back room deal for easier conference schedules in exchange for joining the conference? It shouldn’t be too difficult to create somewhat balanced schedules in the major conferences. You generally have an idea who the good teams are going to be and every once in awhile you get a surprise like Indiana last year (heck, even University of Southern Cal might be good one of these years, if they get a Heisman QB). It would help if they could hold off and only schedule the next 2-3 years.

Ranking the 5 Best NFL Players From Oregon WWW.GIVEMESPORT.COM The list of notable Oregon Ducks in the NFL includes two Hall of Fame quarterbacks. This is a solid list. Penei Sewell has a chance to be up there at the end of his career, IMHO.