I'm curious what people's thought are on Will Stein's offensive scheme for this year.

To be clear, the ultimate metric of offensive is point per drive (and in a perfect world also factored by starting field position), and we did really good.

It's an interesting sample against Montana State, where it seems pretty obvious the coaches were treating the game more as a proving ground rather than trying to exploit every match-up, so in a way it was a great look at the scheme Stein would really like to run this year, even though the playbook was kept small. But I don't believe it was kept so small that we didn't see the strong tendencies of this offense through the season.

The.thing that stuck out to me is the lack of eye candy and option football. This appears to be a relatively straightforward pro-style scheme where the goal is to impose our will against the opponent with our better talent.

The isn't much in the way of who has the football and presnap misdirection. There simply is a "am I going to hand it off, throw wide to the left or the right or down the field"; basically the defense has to guard the whole field every play.

The real quick decision making being imposed in the QBs is working through their progression, not RPO or run option football.

I'm guessing there are two reasons for that, #1 they prefer the Oline not have to hold back on blocking down field past five yards. These road graders routinely were past 5 yards when run blocking. The other reason is I'm still not convinced our QBs are great at split second decision making, at least not yet, maybe by the end of the season or next year.

Lastly the QB and RBs seems strongly coached to take what the defense gives you, don't swing for the fences, which contributed to more methodical drives rather than a large number of explosive plays.

I kept thinking to myself, so this is what it used to look like for Bama fans when they beat every mediocre or bad team by the same 60-10 score with very little in the way of amazing highlights, just pure domination.

What do you all think?

What I noticed, in this small one game sample, is how methodically the Ducks spread the field. Oregon challenged from sideline to sideline.

As an added observation, the quarterbacks when passing seemed to search the entire field of play, and find the best option to pass to with a couple of exceptions. With a deep group of skilled and talented receivers this opportunity should only get better as the team gels.

Unless circumstances require otherwise, I don't believe we'll see the B1G O Reveal before OBD plays in a White Out.

I think this game was more about making sure the offense did a lot of the basics right.

There are a lot of new and young faces and making sure that Donate Moore is doing what he's supposed to do and ensuring that Dakorian Moore is on the same page is a big deal moving forward.

Last year the offense was out of sync badly at times during the first two games. The coaching staff has already said they tried to do too much in those opening games. Just because a play was done in practice a few times doesn't mean it's ready for game day.

I fully expect to see this offense evolve in the coming weeks. It will look significantly different once Oregon State comes to town (game 4).

7 minutes ago, Jon Joseph said:

Unless circumstances require otherwise, I don't believe we'll the B1G O Reveal before OBD plays in a White Out.

Ducks can navigate and persevere through a whiteout. The lead duck breaks the wind for others leading the formation. The others fall in off his wings creating a draft for the other ducks following.

Go Ducks!

15 minutes ago, Jon Joseph said:

Unless circumstances require otherwise, I don't believe we'll the B1G O Reveal before OBD plays in a White Out.

This.

Many of our usual plays--were not used, (yet) and we heard the announcers say a ton of times how Stein told them that, "we are keeping things simpler this year in the first game." So, smaller playbook, and frankly--I felt going into this game that Oregon would overwhelm in the trenches...and they did.

But instead of ball-controlling and scoring 24 points as a former HC here did, Lanning/Stein let it loose.

Way too soon for a judgment yet on the offense, but boy--what a great start! I also thought it was notable that the first play from scrimmage was an outside zone left, snapped from behind center, with a DEEP "I" formation. I was looking at how far Whittington was positioned...and was surprised. A new wrinkle...

Beast!

I also don’t believe that Oregon showed much in the game against Montana State. They didn’t need to.

We were content to spread the ball around and give everyone touches.

I think the rotation will shrink and we’ll see some players start to emerge as the go to playmakers. It’s clear that Coach Stein plans to feature Kenyon Sadiq heavily in the offense this year and I expect to see him lined up all over the field to create match up problems for the defense. The same applies to Dakorien Moore - he’s too talented not to get the ball in his hands. I wonder what other players will emerge especially from the talented stable of running backs (note: I NEED to see more Jordan Davidson, especially in short yardage or goal-line situations)?

1 hour ago, Charles Fischer said:

Way too soon for a judgment yet on the offense,

Defense also.

I will be tapping the brakes until after September 27th.

The coaches did what they needed to do on offense. Dante Moore needed passing reps, and it was good to have him run a two minute offense in the game. Was it needed? Not really.

Stein mentioned that because the talent is different this year vs. last year, his play calling would change.

Having a QB, RBs, and receivers that can attack all levels of the field is important. We have the ability to play a smash mouth type running game, or switch to a personnel package that can spread the field, and attack the edges, or downfield.

I think Stein is trying to see what our players can do in these early games, and then use players that create match up problems against better defensive competition.

I believe the vanilla offense is by design. We should have no problems beating the next 3 opponents with this exact game plan. Why show anything if we do not have to. For a little reference for next game, Oklahoma

State beat UT Martin 27-7, last year Montana State beat the same UT Martin 49-12 at the end of the year. I believe this is the transitive property which works in math but not always in sports and comparing last years

teams to this years does not always work out. But there is some correlation.

On the other hand showing unique sets in a game makes the next opponent have to practice for that and take up practice time. (Didnt Chip used to do this? How much practice time did other teams take up for Chips 2

pt conversion formations?) What do you think is better? Showing nothing and surprising a team or show a lot of formation to make them scheme for each one?

3 hours ago, OregonDucks said:

(note: I NEED to see more Jordan Davidson, especially in short yardage or goal-line situations)?

Before Jordan James became the starter and was the backup to Bucky....they used him as the power-back inside the five yard line. It sure looks like Jordan Davison is filling that role this year!

Yesterday the O and the D were vanilla by design. DL and company were way more interested I putting young guys into live game scenarios to get a read on their ability to contribute to the team. I hope they were impressed, I was!

I agree that we won’t show much more of our offense (or defense) until the Penn State game. We don’t need to dig deep four our next few opponents. Go Ducks!

1 hour ago, Charles Fischer said:

Before Jordan James became the starter and was the backup to Bucky....they used him as the power-back inside the five yard line. It sure looks like Jordan Davison is filling that role this year!

It appears that that is one way the coaches plan to use Jordan Davison this year. I wouldn’t mind seeing Sadiq used in that role either.

I was extremely impressed with Oregon’s RB depth but Jordan stood out and I can’t wait to see more of what he can do.