Did Beating Ohio State Hinder Oregon’s Progress?

[FishDuck Article]

Is that a crazy question? There are so many different components to consider that I cannot help but think that the surprising victory in Columbus steered the coaches into a short-term view at the sacrifice of next year. You know where I’m going with this, and I’d love to get your take on this “ponder-point” in the Our Beloved Ducks ...

 

Read the full article here...

[Haywarduck]

Completely agree, and my perfect scenario was we lose to tosu and then beat them at the end of the season. I think losing to us might have even been the best thing to happen to tosu too.

 

Success too early is seldom a good thing. The injuries have been very impactful, but having a team peak the second game of the year isn't a good thing. 

 

I mean what was the upside after beating tosu? The only upside was making the playoffs or the season was a failure, and we have what we have now. 

 

Just like next season, we really should lose to Georgia, and then maybe build as the season goes on. What if we beat Georgia?

[30Duck]

Nobody thought Oregon was going to beat Ohio State, then no KT, and Flowe, come on? But the Ducks won, and AB got Player of the Week, and the Ducks were No.4, and soon No.3/. Nobody expected that, I'm not sure that many other teams have had their ranking based on one single game as did this Oregon team?

 

So, it certainly shifted the focus of the season, and it's hard to see where it will end now. 

[1Ducker1]

I think it did-sure gave us a false since of security.

[GODUCKS15]

Next year will be the SOS. Ducks will lose to GA, maybe BYU next year and another loss in conference. So kiss the CFP goodbye again. Hey it was fun while it lasted. 

I think you're on to something Charles. 

 

[Duck 68]

Brilliant! Absent your interesting line of thought, I have long wondered why Brown hasn't been managed like a star baseball pitcher. On those days when you don't have your best stuff, a relief pitcher comes in. Pitchers can handle it, why can't quarterbacks? 

[Haywarduck]

The more I think about it, the tosu game was the pistol plunge moment for the season. We saw entrenchment by the Ducks and innovation by the nuts.

 

When Cristobal beat the dawgs, with the pistol plunge, it set our scheme back until we recently saw it dropped. The tosu game set our qb development back. 

 

The good news is AB's impact should be short term. While I am grateful for the warrior effort he has given the program, his limitations have been obvious, but we couldn't change after the win.

 

Good news, the future looks bright, but expect a bumpy ride with little game experience at the qb position. Another shift from AB's ability to the next qb's ability will be exciting. It is what we all want, as was getting rid of the pistol plunge.

[Washington Waddler]

On 11/22/2021 at 8:13 AM, Haywarduck said:

When Cristobal beat the dawgs, with the pistol plunge, it set our scheme back until we recently saw it dropped. The tosu game set our qb development back. 

 

     ‘Tried and true’ makes for a poor guiding offensive philosophy in football simply because the circumstances that allowed for success in the past game are not necessarily going to be the there in the following. 

 

     I’m a Mario fan. However, one thing that makes me nervous anytime an OL guy takes the reins is that his force of habit seeking consistency that was forged over time in the trenches will blind him to the more volatile and fluid reality happening behind him.

[DuckFan93]

Completely agree.   It was evident that Ducks was a one-dimensional team easy to beat once someone figured out how to stop the run and KT.   We had no answers because we don't have an air game.    And that's on the coaches for not developing it despite clear evidence of AB's shortcomings.   Having a passing threat alone might not have been enough, but it would have helped with the score and other parts of the game.

 

As I said before, it seems obvious that we should've tried to play a 2-QB system most of the year to help get a young guy who can throw gain the experience they need.   I heard that they insisted on playing AB because he was the only QB who could fully grasp the playbook.   OK, but surely TT or Butter could grasp part of it if they only play part of the game?

 

Anyway, it's easy to couch coach, but I am not the only one criticizing the coaching.  It's been very frustrating to see no change.

Edited November 22, 2021 by DuckFan93

[Grandpa Duck]

In a word, "No".  Asked a question like this at Oregon Club a few weeks ago, a question about getting back-up players more experience, the responding coach said (paraphrasing, and I heard it second hand): "Listen, our jobs are dependent upon winning games.  We play the players who give us the best opportunity to win."

 

Our back-up QB's get lots of reps in practice every week, probably more than Brown because of his nicks and bruises.  The coaches see them all the time.  If they were performing better than Brown they would be playing in the games because that would give us the best opportunity to win.  Don't think for a second that the coaches and players were not doing their very best to win at Columbus and Palo Alto, and everywhere we have played.  It's their career!

 

The philosophy that "All is lost because we are not going to play for the national championship, so let's just ditch the rest of this year and play the back-ups and plan on doing better next year" simply does not fly when you put yourself in the coaches' shoes.

[RagnarNate]

For months, I have been thinking very similarly about the Ohio State game: that it was turning out to be a curse in disguise. My reasons are slightly different than the other posters, but I don't disagree with any of the other opinions or observations. 

 

I almost didn't watch that tOSU game real time because I was expecting a depressing and predictable failure. My hope was simply that they wouldn't get blown out. Was it going to be a repeat of the 2015 National Championship Game? Very likely. Then, much to mine and everyone else's surprise, they won and did so looking very solid. It certainly shocked press people and everyone else around the college football world. The way the Ducks won was as impressive as the mere fact that they pulled an upset. 

 

I think one key to explaining that how they pulled off that great performance and then delivered so many subsequent let-downs is that in that game, the Ducks had NOTHING TO LOSE when they faced Ohio State. Everyone was expecting them to lose. There was less mental, performance pressure in that early season game because they just had nothing to lose. I have a little bit of coaching experience with high schoolers in soccer, and I think it holds true for any sport and any level of competition, that handling, processing, or dealing with the internal mental pressure of competition is as important as any other factor.

 

Success and expectations can create pressure to live up to a billing or ranking (or to achieve a lofty goal that is now suddenly more feasible). From that kind of pressure a multitude of dangers can ensue: mainly doubt, fear, and anxiety. The mental/emotional playing clarity that every athlete needs to perform at their optimum is a state of mind where the player is so utterly immersed in the game that they become, to borrow a phrase from Emerson, "the transparent eyeball." Most coaches make a lot of effort to defeat these mental distractions (we play one game at a time, or like when Mark Helfrich used to say, "we're loose"), but which coach actually succeeds is at it? The coach has to first apply it to himself. It is a test of character more than anything. 

 

In sports, the higher you go, the more pressure is there, internally, within each player, as much as externally. I think about how often a professional soccer player misses or flubs a penalty kick or a free kick scoring opportunity. Those players are exponentially more skilled than anyone I coached, but they flub almost as often. Why? Because they live with vastly more pressure. Imagine an entire nation hating on you because you flubbed a free kick at a critical juncture in a world cup match (ask David Beckham), and that is just the external pressure.

 

In the case of the Ducks, I think there was a great deal of internal pressure, probably within each person in the entire organization, once they had that unexpected win at tOSU. Suddenly, they were one of the top teams in the nation. That's a lot to live up to... and it can paradoxically breed a current of complacency. The thoughts are, "We're #3 now; beating tOSU is what we do; and opposing teams will just fold up against us because none of them are as good as Ohio State. I prepared for tOSU with 'x' amount of effort, and that was good enough, so for a team ranked 35 lower than tOSU, I only have to prepare 'x-35' amount."  Ok, probably no player will admit to thinking those things, but there had to have been a tendency to think that way. Some probably gave in more than others. 

 

Here is one example of the potential negative impact of success: A coach, under the self-induced mental pressure to live up to expectations, can become risk averse and stingy with his substitution decisions and that can have a subtle yet insidious impact on the team culture. It can generate a win-at-all-costs attitude that undercuts other the coaching messages about "playing loose" and communicates pressure to the players on the field as well as to those who get subbed in. If you know you won't get subbed in as often, because we have to win, then you better make those moments count. Not being subbed in as much undercuts the message of confidence and trust from the coach and that in turn can bring more doubt to a player's ability to believe in himself. 

 

Compare Ohio State's trajectory this season so far. It is, ironically, similar to that of the 2014 season. I remember watching their loss to Virginia Tech at the beginning of that season, and I concluded that tOSU was not going to be very competitive that year. That loss, however, apparently brought them the right kind of humility to work on improving, playing hard in every game, and they ended up trashing Oregon with a third-string quarterback (after trashing Alabama in the semi-final). Ohio State this season, perhaps having a bad day back in that 2nd game, perhaps being complacent or over-confident, received a helpful shock from that loss to Oregon, and they seem to have something to prove to everyone now. 

 

Maybe to some I am being Captain Obvious, but I think that coaching to handle the pressure of success is a critical element to making it all the way to the top. The teams that succeed at consistently performing at the elite level have mastered coaching how to succeed, how to emotionally and mentally process success, and how to prepare to succeed week after week. The coaches don't just talk about it, they live it because it's a matter of their character and personality. 

[Charles Fischer]

On 11/23/2021 at 10:40 AM, RagnarNate said:

Here is one example of the potential negative impact of success: A coach, under the self-induced mental pressure to live up to expectations, can become risk averse and stingy with his substitution decisions and that can have a subtle yet insidious impact on the team culture. It can generate a win-at-all-costs attitude that undercuts other the coaching messages about "playing loose" and communicates pressure to the players on the field as well as to those who get subbed in. If you know you won't get subbed in as often, because we have to win, then you better make those moments count. Not being subbed in as much undercuts the message of confidence and trust from the coach and that in turn can bring more doubt to a player's ability to believe in himself. 

 

Ragnar....this is an epic first post.  GREAT information and items to ponder.  Please post often, as well-thought out and well written posts are so highly valued here.  WELCOME!

[MikeJ]

Thanks Charles for putting that in writing.  I believe it did hinder Oregon's progress and now I feel slightly less crazy for thinking so.  I'm a longtime (35 years) Duck fan ('90 grad) who has lived in Salt Lake City for the last 30 years, so I'm very familiar with both teams.  I actually said to a few Ute-fan friends of mine in the week leading up to the game that beating Ohio State might have been the worst thing that could have happened to Oregon this year.  That drew some puzzled looks of course but I was only half joking. 

 

It has been pretty apparent to my eyes at least that our limited passing game was going to become a problem at the end of the season and certainly if we had made the playoff.  I would have rather risked losing an extra game or two and taken the chance on developing Thompson during the season so we had more options now.

 

  Even if the playoffs were our focus after the Ohio State game I still think taking a chance on developing Thompson better during the year would have been smart.  Even now I'd like to see if he could be worked into the mix a bit before we (hopefully) face Utah again in the title game.  If we get beaten badly by Utah again it will put a pretty big dent in our reputation as the top program in the conference. 

[Jon Joseph]

NO! The W in Columbus was the only reason after the L at Stanford why the Ducks was in the top 4.

 

The 4th cross-over, 9th regularly scheduled game, on the road vs a top 25 team is what hurt the Ducks.

[Charles Fischer]

On 11/23/2021 at 1:08 PM, MikeJ said:

Thanks Charles for putting that in writing.

 

I thought it was a classic "ponder-point" that I like to kick around...the "what-if" kind of thing.  I was hoping people would spend more time discussing this topic instead of delving into all the negative of the game.  Oh well.  I tried to distract them!

 

And MikeJ...it is a wonderful sight to have a new member who writes great thoughts, writes them well AND adds reading spaces after every couple of sentences to make it easier on old-eyes.  Please do post your thoughts often and WELCOME!