Oregon has more 4 star and 5 star players, more accolades, more of this and that.

But what did you see? I saw Indiana linemen who were leaner, faster and more aggressive than Oregon linemen.

I saw an Indiana QB who could run for big gains while Dante just lowered his head and got sacked and on another play, barely got touched and went down.

When you play good teams in important games, those kinds of things get highlighted.

Another year and some new players, so we are not doomed forever. Dan Lanning will see this and make corrections. I hope.

On the plus side, Oregon does have a lot of good and capable players. RBs, TEs, WRs, DBs are all good. Get more athletic as a team and the problems are mostly solved.

Recruiting is getting better and better. We are not there yet, but getting closer and closer. Ducks have been beating all but the top talent that makes it to the finals. They just have to get a little bit better.

So when you look at recruits on sites like Duck Territory, don't just look at the number of stars or who offered them. Also take a look at their pics in uniform and their highlights. I think that will give you a better idea of what kind of player they are. Your eyes do not lie to you. I think the future is very bright because of who they are bringing in, despite this disappointing game.

Part of the reason why Chip Kelly was so successful at Oregon was that he had athletes at QB, O line, D line, edge, and linebacker. Oregon had to get bigger, but now they need to get back to being more athletic. I think we will see that soon. Starting with Nasir Wyatt. When he is on the field, things happen.

So Duck fans, I say the glass is half full, not half empty. Actually more than half full. The rest of the liquid to fill the glass to the top is in the recruiting classes and the portal. I can feel it.

Like everyone else I was disappointed at how this season ended. We knew our offense needed a perfect game to win, and one play into the game that was out the window.

I donate generously to the athletic fund, and school each year. However, as a realist, without Phil Knight’s generosity, Oregon is not on the national stage in football.

I will attend games until traffic gets so bad on the freeway that it absurd to attend games from Portland…and that appears to be getting closer than a National Championship.

As a fan i stand on the shoulders of other donors, coaches, past and current players, that really have put Oregon where it is today.

Want and need are two different things. I want to see Oregon win a Championship in football, and am happy to see seasons where winning 13 games is disappointing.

I think the biggest disappointment is playing with OSU and Indiana during regular season and then getting destroyed by them in the playoffs. This does not compute.

Vegas Duck,

You stated, "...the biggest disappointment is playing with OSU and Indiana during regular season and then getting destroyed by them in the playoffs. This does not compute."

Point to leadership when assigning fault. Our coaches are part of the team's leadership, and they must be watchful of short and long-term trends and threats to quality control in mental attitude, preparation, and readiness to compete individually and as a team. They tripped up after Penn St., allowing our team to become too high and sure they were better than they really were/are; our leaders did not recognize Indiana

was a major threat to defeat OBDs, and while the Indiana HC worked the officials on the sidelines, I don't believe our HC did that IOT protect

our QB, and our QB became banged up; Indiana's coach was wrong, and our HC was right, but wrong. Dante seems still fragile, and his fundamentals and attention-to-detail are not yet set in cement. He must understand his actions (such as progressions and details) affect the whole team, right then. Our team needs our leaders to be a "Major Payne", to be hard and unrelenting until our players are tougher on themselves WRT details, decisions, and timings, and they become great leaders.

Best regards. That was a tough game to watch because we have a good-to-great team. Our only losses were to an incredible team that executed and performed, and the final championship games' outcome does not matter. That was an interesting win in the Orange Bowl, and I look forward to a championship game in the Peach Bowl with a more favorable final ending for OBDs. By-the-way, "progressions" refers to an assessment of more than one receiver/target. This is a great forum.

Thanks and VR,

KCDuck1

I agree with the title of this thread.

What I saw:

1. Moore is a QB that doesn't have a natural aptitude for real time situational awareness of everything going on around him. He's made great strides, but against the best teams' defenses he's got a long ways to go.

2. We wouldn't have been any better on offense if we had Whittington and Davison. Harris produced every bit as much as they would have. He played so good somebody is going to pay the man next year whether it's us or some other team.

3. Our offensive line continued to play very very slow. Seemingly always getting beat to the block point by the defender. Maybe injuries, maybe just too big and a bad fit for a system that requires a lot of agility from the blockers.

4. Our defense played really, really well. We shut down their run game on 1st and second down forcing 14 3rd down with the majority 3rd and long. And our 2 best cornerbacks and nickel played elite level coverage. How did they play so well despite getting over 50 points scored on them???

5. There is no defense for the perfect pass and Mendoza threw about 15 of them. What are you going to do except tip your cap to him?

6. We gifted them 3 scores straight up and a fourth they took away and had to drive less than 30 yards to the endzone, totalling 28 points. That's about how much we lost by right?

7. If we played mistake free football we would have had a chance against a generational level team, just like we thought...but it simply wasn't realistic to expect that. If there is one thing this team was consistent about all year was leaving a lot of meat on the bone due to mistakes.

It's obviously easy to look at the final scores of the Rose Bowl and Peach bowl and call it a pattern, but that's crazy levels of intellectual laziness. We were obliterated for completely different sets of reasons. This playoff Dan Lanning resolved the issues that caused us to be blown out in the Rose Bowl.

He now has a new set of lessons to learn and solve for next year.

I always appreciate Solar's comments. I have been thinking along the same lines.

The reasons for last year's fiasco and this year's are different. DL "can't win the big one" is simplistic.

Early in the game, the Ducks were winning on first down on offense and defense. Mendoza is so good at converting on third down, that sometimes that was not enough. His ball placement defeated good coverage. However, Wyatt's strip and sack was very encouraging. If this had been sustained, we would have had a reasonable chance of winning.

The reason that it was not sustained was turnovers, which not only led to easy scores but eventually demoralized our defense. The miscue with Hill was the turning point, and I don't know if that was Dante's fault. It may be that Hill did not do enough reps because of the RB situation.

Regarding the OL, Duck Territory said that Iuli was playing hurt. I also noticed that World disappeared (a rather bizarre concept) and was replaced by Crader at some point. Longer term, I wonder whether it would be better to develop our OL in house rather than plugging in portal guys every year, allowing them to play together more than one year, even if there are some growing pains. The incoming linemen may be multi-year starters.

I expressed some thoughts on Dante in another thread.

PS Solar's advice yesterday was good. Be grateful for the 13 wins.

This is what made the game so painful to watch….OBD were fighting the good fight….outside turnovers they were a hell of a match for Indiana.

Youth….and I wonder if we missed our RB’s pass blocking…not going to watch again for couple months.

Here is what I was thinking about all day long on this Saturday...

You take the exact same game, exact same roster, except you trade quarterbacks - who wins?

Dante made some very good plays and some very bad ones too. Mendoza was close to perfect since his fumbles did not hurt his team.

One thing that has been consistent all year is the Ducks not stopping teams in the red zone. If the Ducks were a championship level team, they would have made Indiana settle for field goals on some of those mistakes.

The pick 6 to start the game was not the reason they lost. Oregon tied the game on their next drive. Its like Zero Zero after that with 3 and 1/2 qtrs left to play.

Stats pretty close to even except for turnovers. 2 lost fumbles, 1 pick 6, 2 turnovers on downs, 1 blocked punt, and a missed field goal (which kind of counts as a turnover in a way). That adds up to 7. Can anybody win with that many mistakes and not getting any turnovers from the other team? Sacks was another uneven stat. Mendoza could have been sacked more and Dante could have avoided one or two of those.

And that is why Oregon got blown out so badly despite, yards, first downs, penalties and time of possession being fairly even.

Stats are extremely misleading. We made more yards from scrimmage because we played a far longer field. They had three drives starting from inside our red zone, two of them with first and goal. Pretty difficult to accumulate yardage on that short of a field.