Wisconsin was dialed into our major running plays, and this is a good scouting shout-out to the offensive staff in their preparation. There was a ton to be disappointed about, yet Our Beloved Ducks prevailed. When we needed to run the ball...we did.

Your post-game thoughts?

Unfortunately, if the ducks win out and make it to the playoff, I'm concerned they're going to get rolled by whoever they play for their first game. The offense can't continue to disappear for large stretches and expect to win. The defense did fine, but they aren't going to be able to count on the opponent having an anemic passing game.

I'll take this all week long.

I sat through too many frustrating defeats in the 70's and 80's to pitch now!

Adversity struck, and the Ducks still won the day!

Hope Moore has no lasting effects from that shot, and KUDOS to BT for standing in the gap!

Bye week coming up before Iowa. Let’s hope Dante is healthy. I forgot Matayo Uiagelele was on the team until he wiped a TD off the scoreboard.

This was a typical Big Ten slog. It is not high flying offense which we often disparaged when we were members of the Pac12 looking at the B1G. These teams emphasize line play, move at a very measured pace on offense. Keep the game close. Hope their opponents make a mistake. Prepare for November weather. If you don't have the linemen...ie. Ohio State, Michigan, Iowa...you don't "succeed."

Weather obviously impacted things.

Not sure if weather impacted 29-22 Alabama vs S. Carolina, 17-10 Vandy vs Missouri, 34-26 Ole Miss vs OU, 28-21 Nebraska vs Northwestern, 27-24 Rutgers vs Purdue. As noted in a post I made under a different topic, the margin of victory between Power 4 opponents so far this year is closer than any year since 2009.

Normally, the Ducks next opponent Iowa would have been in a slog game today, but they won comfortably today with a pick-six and punt return TD to add to their offense. That is the opponent making mistakes.

We sure have a "thing" with playing the Badgers, as both years we were highly favored, but they played us very tough.

Actually I am choosing to see my cup as half full. Pretty happy with the win in miserable weather and IMHO while not perfect Oregon won in a convincing way. So I am choosing to have a large gin and tonic and am currently streaming the Grateful Dead and listening to Box of Rain which seems appropriate. GO DUCKS!

Perhaps a fire hose, or two, could be used in practice to prepare the team for our weekend storm.

It's a win! A win is a win!'

Lots to work on.

Go Ducks and be ready for Iowa!

Damn rain anything could have happened.

I imagine that game was pretty miserable for the players.

The close up of the cheer squad sure look like pain in the rain... At least some of the players got to warm up periodically.

Certainly will take the win, the weather was horrible, but we have to be better on offense, Moore has to read the defense better, our O-line has to be more consistent, Stein has to have better game plans. Defense was fine, this Wisconsin team is an abomination on offense, I would like to see us hold the running game better, but it is what it is.

Should drop in the polls. I see about 3-4 SEC teams that will beat us if we play them, disappointing, but this was step back compared to the previous week, Wisconsin is bad team, and we struggled in this game, even if it never seemed like Wisconsin had a serious chance.

https://fishduck.com/2025/08/oregons-top-five-new-rivalries-in-the-b1g/

I was already alluding to how Oregon v Wisconsin has a potential Rivalry written all over it. When the Ducks play the Badgers it has tended to be a close ans brutal game.

This game was brutal but despite the score it wasn't all that close after the first quarter.

I'm not worried about this team at all. As much as Indiana controlled things, they got help twice to score their go ahead TD (gifted extra yardage on a 3rd down conversion and a no call pass inteference for their TD). To play as horribly this week tells me this is a young team that can focus, but not consistently enough to feel they can challenge for a title. They are about to embark on their 4th 2k plus trip of the year, and they're 3-0 so far.

I wasn't impressed with Iowa or Indiana to be frank, and Penn State pretty much demonstrated Iowa has trouble handling physical teams as well (so does Indian whether you want to believe that at this point). Ohio State has looked good, but they have yet to face a real offense. I believe every fan base of elite programs are gnashing their teeth right now because nobody has a clear-cut dominant team. NOBODY. We are truly in the age of parity. I mean, cmon. Vanderbilt is a so called top ten team (really? Does anyone in this forum fear Vanderbilt?).

It's October. Titles aren't won in October. Besides. I called for two score margins of victory. That is my standard. It sticks. Especially for a team that is exactly where we expected them to be: 6-1. They are ahead of themselves as far as I am concerned because I really didn't expect the defense to hold Penn State to 17 points in 4 quarters (and those that are saying Penn State is a shell of itself, well that shell almost beat Iowa, but for their lack of having their NFL bound QB. An Iowa team that held "superpower" Indiana to 20-and they would have won had they had their QB). The defense will play well enough for the offense to get their butts in gear and start throwing the ball downfield.

We have seen a glimpse of what could be. I personally believe Stein is holding back on the offense given some of its troubles. I personally would open the flood gates, part the damn Red Sea and try to destroy every defense I see. But that is just me. I personally don't believe a team is going to win the title unless they score 40 plus. ON A DEFENSE LIKE OHIO STATE'S. So, in my view, you better be dialing up every damn fade, post, corner and wheel route known to mankind because you need to take down every secondary in football. There will be no explosive running plays against the elite teams. Your QB is going to have to drop 16 gigaton nuclear bombs. And you better have the best air force known to mankind.

That's my opinion and I am sticking to it. A QB is going to win the damn title, with or without good protection. We have that of QB. We need to feed him missiles (bunker busters) and atomics. Everything else is wasting time.

Edited 6 hours ago6 hr by Mike West
spelling errors

Worried about a road game at Iowa honestly. As someone said above I'd be concerned about a number of SEC teams potentially down the road. US and UW are not gimmes either. Penalties at home was too much

I'm still struggling to figure out if we are really good or really bad on offense. We've been both, especially early in games. We aren't matching the intensity of our opponents early on.

Also, i wonder if we have so much variation in the plays we run that the offensive blocking doesn't have the precision to properly block a variety of different looks from defenses. So many of our "custom" play call are getting trashed by missed blocks. Not blocks they lost, I'm talking blocks they could have made, but a defender beat them to he point of attack or ducked in behind them because the blocker thought they didn't need to block them.

I think defense is as good as we've had in the Lanning era. Maybe not quite 2019 good, but close.

Maybe there is a quarterback out there who can be successful “without good protection “, but from what I saw against Indiana and Wisconsin that quarterback is not starting for OBD. It amazes me that those two opponents’ pass rushers have no difficulty getting into our backfield and our pass rushers couldn’t find theirs with GPS.

An interesting stat to ponder.

Against Indiana....the Ducks allowed 8 tackles for loss (inclusive of 6 sacks) and Oregon scored 20 points.

Against Wisconsin....the Ducks allowed 7 tackles for loss (inclusive of 4 sacks) and Oregon scored 21 points.

No other game has Oregon allowed close to that many tackles for loss, and no other game has Oregon come close to being held to 20 pts.

There is now a bye week before facing another opponent, Iowa, that had 9 tackles for loss with 4 sacks today vs Minnesota. Hope the O-line and staff use the bye wisely.

Lanning running out the clock when he could have got STYLE POINTS after the interception, was a class act. How many coaches in this position would have gone for another touchdown?

Water was GOOD to Us!

18 minutes ago, Mike West said:

I'm not worried about this team at all. As much as Indiana controlled things, they got help twice to score their go ahead TD (gifted extra yardage on a 3rd down conversion and a no call pass inteference for their TD). To play as horribly this week tells me this is a young team that can focus, but not consistently enough to feel they can challenge for a title. They are about to embark on their 4th 2k plus trip of the year, and they're 3-0 so far.

I wasn't impressed with Iowa or Indiana to be frank, and Penn State pretty much demonstrated Iowa has trouble handling physical teams as well (so does Indian whether you want to believe that at this point). Ohio State has looked good, but they have yet to face a real offense. I believe every fan base of elite programs are gnashing their teeth right now because nobody has a clear-cut dominant team. NOBODY. We are truly in the age of parity. I mean, cmon. Vanderbilt is a so called top ten team (really? Does anyone in this forum fear Vanderbilt?).

It's October. Titles aren't won in October. Besides. I called for two score margins of victory. That is my standard. It sticks. Especially for a team that is exactly where we expected them to be: 6-1. They are ahead of themselves as far as I am concerned because I really didn't expect the defense to hold Penn State to 17 points in 4 quarters (and those that are saying Penn State is a shell of itself, well that shell almost beat Iowa, but for their lack of having their NFL bound QB. An Iowa team that held "superpower" Indiana to 20-and they would have won had they had their QB). The defense will play well enough for the offense to get their butts in gear and start throwing the ball downfield.

We have seen a glimpse of what could be. I personally believe Stein is holding back on the offense given some of its troubles. I personally would open the flood gates, part the damn Red Sea and try to destroy every defense I see. But that is just me. I personally don't believe a team is going to win the title unless they score 40 plus. ON A DEFENSE LIKE OHIO STATE'S. So, in my view, you better be dialing up every damn fade, post, corner and wheel route known to mankind because you need to take down every secondary in football. There will be no explosive running plays against the elite teams. Your QB is going to have to drop 16 gigaton nuclear bombs. And you better have the best air force known to mankind.

That's my opinion and I am sticking to it. A QB is going to win the damn title, with or without good protection. We have that of QB. We need to feed him missiles (bunker busters) and atomics. Everything else is wasting time.

Thank you Mike for making me feel better.

I usually find myself to be one of the sunshine pumpers and right now I am finding I have quite a bit of continued frustration. More on that on Monday.

But still it's nice to have a positive take on everything.

2 minutes ago, Solar said:

I'm still struggling to figure out if we are really good or really bad on offense. We've been both, especially early in games. We aren't matching the intensity of our opponents early on.

Also, i wonder if we have so much variation in the plays we run that the offensive blocking doesn't have the precision to properly block a variety of different looks from defenses. So many of our "custom" play call are getting trashed by missed blocks. Not blocks they lost, I'm talking blocks they could have made, but a defender beat them to he point of attack or ducked in behind them because the blocker thought they didn't need to block them.

I think defense is as good as we've had in the Lanning era. Maybe not quite 2019 good, but close.

They're beating blocks because they know what we like to do, and they're aggressively attacking the point if attack. We're in a conference of very good coaches. They know DL and his staff pride themselves on physicality. How do you beat physicality? You go all in. It is no mistake that teams are trying to take away our running game. They've also schemed ways to bring pressure. Our staff wants to impose its brand. Teams are going to attack it with everything they have. What's the best response? Stop exclusively attacking teams the same way. That is exactly why constraint/sequential plays matter.

I wrote a couple of articles about it. Check them out here.

and here

Edited 5 hours ago5 hr by Mike West
added a link

Didn't notice any obvious egregious injuries, this game.

I always sort of dread playing games like this, due to the increased chance of injury.

Count your blessings, OBD!

I guess the challenge the coaches face is convincing the team to compete against teams they think they're better than. Not impressed with the emotional or competitive maturity overall.

I think OBD are going to learn more from these experiences than games like Rutgers. Very grateful that Stein made the adjustment and stuck with the ground game.

We can’t see what Dante is seeing down the field, but it doesn’t seem like he knows where he wants to go with the ball or what matchups he has when he calls for the snap.

Is Stein calling plays with a less experienced QB in mind, or is he still running an offense for the two QB’s with the most games ever played? It would be interesting to compare the average release time from the last three seasons.

Dante seems to get rattled a bit after those early sacks. I’m not sure why we have him running as much as he has with the 8 capable running backs we have.

Edited 4 hours ago4 hr by mikethehiker

2 hours ago, Charles Fischer said:

Lanning running out the clock when he could have got STYLE POINTS after the interception, was a class act. How many coaches in this position would have gone for another touchdown?

Water was GOOD to Us!

Cignetti is always going for style points. The Indiana stat is what it is in part to running up the score. They are still a good team and beat us so I am not trying to throw shade at them but they are absolutely running up the score on their opponents.

19 minutes ago, mikethehiker said:

I think OBD are going to learn more from these experiences than games like Rutgers. Very grateful that Stein made the adjustment and stuck with the ground game.

We can’t see what Dante is seeing down the field, but it doesn’t seem like he knows where he wants to go with the ball or what matchups he has when he calls for the snap.

Is Stein calling plays with a less experienced QB in mind, or is he still running an offense for the two QB’s with the most games ever played? It would be interesting to compare the average release time from the last three seasons.

Dante seems to get rattled a bit after those early sacks. I’m not sure why we have him running as much as he has with the 8 capable running backs we have.

Sadly I think he may have stuck with the ground game because they had a backup qb in there. It worked but they need to use the run to open up the pass more.

1 hour ago, Grandpa Duck said:

Maybe there is a quarterback out there who can be successful “without good protection “, but from what I saw against Indiana and Wisconsin that quarterback is not starting for OBD. It amazes me that those two opponents’ pass rushers have no difficulty getting into our backfield and our pass rushers couldn’t find theirs with GPS.

If we keep doing what we're doing, you're correct. They cracked the code. It's not that difficult. Somebody's grandson was predicting plays tonight. The TD pass Dante threw against Indiana was schemed to handle what Indiana and Wisconsin pulled on us. It actually happened in the Penn State game too. You know, the clinching TD in OT? That is what needs to be more of the offense, when necessary.

So, in my ultra hack opinion, we start getting Moore out of the pocket more often, or we get beat in the playoffs.

It was great Duck weather!!

2 hours ago, Grandpa Duck said:

Maybe there is a quarterback out there who can be successful “without good protection “, but from what I saw against Indiana and Wisconsin that quarterback is not starting for OBD. It amazes me that those two opponents’ pass rushers have no difficulty getting into our backfield and our pass rushers couldn’t find theirs with GPS.

Those are rare...

The last one I can think of was Caleb Williams. He basically played without an offensive line.

However, he couldn't win the conference so there's that.

What Mike West said. 😁Times how many times he posted. Also, what Charles and others said, a win is a win.

Hopefully, this season is only half over, and OBD will play in 16 games. This Wisconsin game will be a distant memory. Such is College Football.

Winning football games is hard. Especially in a monsoon, which hurts your team's speed and quickness advantage. Especially with a young football team. Especially with fourteen new starters.

2 hours ago, Mike West said:

If we keep doing what we're doing, you're correct. They cracked the code. It's not that difficult. Somebody's grandson was predicting plays tonight. The TD pass Dante threw against Indiana was schemed to handle what Indiana and Wisconsin pulled on us. It actually happened in the Penn State game too. You know, the clinching TD in OT? That is what needs to be more of the offense, when necessary.

So, in my ultra hack opinion, we start getting Moore out of the pocket more often, or we get beat in the playoffs.

The last two seasons, the Ducks' QBs had more experience than any QBs starting in CFB. There will be erratic play out of Dante from time to time. The same guy who called plays last night called the plays in Jersey. The same guys blocked. Frustrating? Heck yes, but the winner of this game was never in doubt.

Wisconsin has not quit on Luke Fickell, a coach who took the only G5 team to make the four-team PO field. Every B1G team has the defending conference champion in its sights. The coaches in the conference are competent.

Winning in the Big Ten is not easy. Iowa, Michigan, Nebraska, and UW are 6-2. USC is 5-2. All of these teams have looked terrific on occasion and terrible at other times. All could be ranked, including Nebraska, with a win over top 25 Cincinnati.

Compare the number of two-loss teams ranked in the SEC compared to the B1G. Texas and Alabama had tough games against unranked teams yesterday. Ole Miss and Oklahoma had several breakdowns in defense yesterday amid questionable coaching decisions. The SEC has many teams ranked in the preseason. Thus, many games are 'self-fulfilling' top 25 vs. top 25 matchups. The SEC is deeper than the B1G, although this was evidenced in last year's postseason.

OBD will likely drop in today's AP Poll, which doesn't matter. It will be interesting to see how the PO committee treats the teams, including 7-1 OBD, on the fourth of November. Come the 7th of December, it will be infamy if OBD is not in the top eight and hosting an opening game.

Iowa had a Gophers sack fest yesterday. The week before, Minnesota sacked Dylan Riola so many times he looked like he was in a grocery store checkout line. In particular, a young team will not be the same team week after week.

The B1G test for Dan and friends this week and next is to win the bye week over a group of experienced coaches who will have the benefit of playing on their home field. Kirk Ferentz is 130-59 in Kinnick Stadium, .687. I'm hoping for better weather on November 8th in Iowa City.

GO DUCKS!