Former HC Mark Helfrich doesn’t get much love from a great portion of the Oregon fan base. He was the last of the decades-long tradition of continuity at Oregon, and in 2014 he was the man in charge when Oregon reached its peak (though we all hope to see Dan Lanning surpass that mark soon). In 2014 the Ducks won ...

https://fishduck.com/2025/07/how-should-duck-fans-remember-mark-helfrich/

Mark H was a really good man with a very good offensive mind. He was a victim of circumstances, somewhat beyond his control. I thought his removal was premature, especially with some of the young talent he had amassed..........but it was a matter of "what have you done lately". I was sorry to see him go but the program did improve.....as it might have had Mark stayed as coach.

3 minutes ago, FG Lumber said:

I was sorry to see him go but the program did improve.....as it might have had Mark stayed as coach.

I think it would have improved in 2017. I'm sure Hoke would have been fired and Mullens (and Knight) would have had say in the new DC if they opted to keep Helfrich.

The reality was that the old guard of the Oregon staff was fast approaching the end of their ability to keep up with all the changes in college football.

I had another article almost done on the Taggart year and I have one I started on Cristobal. Those have been interesting to reflect on as well.

Nice Man. An example of The Peter Principle. I wish Coach Mark nothing but the best. One of two Oregon coaches who coached in a national championship game and won a Rose Bowl for OBD.

Although the Rose Bowl win was 'this close.' Right, Jameis. 😃

My lasting image of Helfrich is that the chair he sat in for their post game interviews was too big for him. He wasn't hired because Oregon thought he was a great head coach; he was just as close to Chip as there was going to be. It was unfair but Helfrich took the job, and it worked for a while, but the gas ran out and was running on fumes. He might have been able to get it going but I think it was the right decision to move on.

Helf was a true Oregonian and a fellow coastal boy at that! He coached our only Heisman Trophy winner and led us to the NC game with a massive win over FSU. That may have been our most talented team ever.

That said, he whiffed on two DCs and not many coaches survive that. That was not entirely his fault IMHO, I feel like Mullen was being too much of a bean counter instead of just bucking up for the best. Seems he learned that lesson with the hires of Leavitt and Lupoi.

Our recruiting was deteriorating as well. Great man, great football mind, but just not a great HC. If he were coaching the rodents he'd still be there. We just have a higher standard.

Nostalgia can be an addictive drug. What I periodically think about is where Oregon would stand in recruiting today if Taggart hadn't shown the Ducks could recruit nationwide, and Cristobal showed it wasn't just a Taggart thing.

I remember him as someone whose learning curve didn’t match up well with the expectation curve of AD staff and fans alike.

2 hours ago, noDucknewby said:

That said, he whiffed on two DCs and not many coaches survive that. That was not entirely his fault IMHO, I feel like Mullen was being too much of a bean counter instead of just bucking up for the best. Seems he learned that lesson with the hires of Leavitt and Lupoi.

I don't knock the Pellum hire, it was the Oregon way to hire from within when possible and Pellum was close with Aliotti for the better part of 20 years. That seemed like a safe and surefire hire. It didn't work out that way in the end. Pellum didn't have the aggressiveness that Aliotti had when it came to scheme and play-calling.

Hoke was a super-duper-major fail and he was the highest paid Oregon staff member that wasn't the HC at the time of his hire. The Ducks paid out for that disaster. There are so many things that went wrong with that hire. I think first and foremost was that Hoke wanted to shift Oregon's defensive front from the 3-4 to a 4-3. The biggest problem in this shift was that Oregon outright lacked the proper bodies to pull it off. It needed more defensive linemen and a part part of Oregon going for a 3-4 defensive front as to reduce their dependency on those linemen who are difficult to recruit as there aren't very many of them.

From there on out it all just fell apart.

I like to think if Helfrich was given another season Hoke would have been fired and he would have had another shot at hiring.

Perhaps the biggest weakness in Brooks-Helfrich era was that Oregon was so dependent on hiring from within at times that many of those coaches never got terribly good at hiring from a large pool of candidates. Look at what happened to Kelly after he left, he may have finally put together a good staff by his last year at UCLA.

Lanning has done an incredible job in his hires and Cristobal did a good job hiring good people on paper but that never really came together in practice. I look forward to writing on those two coaches and their methods more in the weeks to come.

3 hours ago, FG Lumber said:

Mark H was a really good man with a very good offensive mind. He was a victim of circumstances, somewhat beyond his control

Exactly, the game of social media passed him by. Not necessarily his fault . . . See Saban's voluntary exit as the game passed him by.

3 hours ago, FG Lumber said:

sorry to see him go but the program did improve.....as it might have had Mark stayed as coach.

Yes, but not to the heights we are seeing today due to his, Taggarts and Cristobal's departures.