Steve Francis Football Recruiting Visits Check out SB Nation’s Pacific Takes for my first Oregon Recruiting Q/A! For this writer, a Saturday spent inside the confines of Autzen Stadium will be a welcome relief following last Thursday. Oregon, at home for two of next three weeks, will welcome arguably our biggest prep target of the 2014 class, athlete Budda Baker …
From Video Has the emotion of the Stanford game worn off of you yet? For so many of us — it is almost impossible to objectively look at an Oregon football game as it is being played or shortly after, and give an accurate assessment of it. Yet after some days have passed and I have gone back to study …
The Week 12 BCS standings were released Sunday, and it has cleared up a bit of the picture of who will be playing for the crystal football in early January. There are still four weeks of games left on most schedules – and considering what college football fans have endured thus far this year, the season is far from over. A …
Craig Strobeck The Spread Offense will never work. Stanford’s win over Oregon was clearly evidence of that. “Power Football” will always trump speed and innovation. So give up Ducks, old-school football has and will always prevail. This is the narrative that emerges following seemingly every Oregon loss. When Oregon loses, the argument never seems to be that Oregon with its …
Craig Strobeck 1. “The world is a vampire, sent to drain.” — Billy Corgan, Smashing Pumpkins. My feelings this past weekend after the Oregon vs Stanford tilt on Thursday night are as close a Duck fan could get to having the life blood drained from its body. I ate and slept less, couldn’t turn on the TV to watch but …
Craig Strobeck “Was It Over When Stanford Bombed Pearl Harbor?” Cheer up, Duck fans. Don’t write off the 2013 season just yet. Sure, just like 120 or so of the 123 other FBS teams, those of us perpetually clad in green and yellow have to again come to grips with the prospects of another imperfect season. A BCS bowl game …
I was starting to get worried about too many undefeated teams finishing perfect. Thanks to Stanford we had Oregon drop from the list of unbeaten. We still have Ohio State and Northern Illinois unbeaten thanks to their bye week coming at a convenient time . . . but do those teams really matter right now? Alabama keeps doing what …
People are streaming in for the big PAC-12 showdown, and the Stanford tailgate crowd is the weirdest I’ve ever seen. I’ve seen nary a beer all day; there are wines, better wines and best wines — the kind where you want to write down the name for future reference. There are no Ducks hung in effigy, but check out this clever use of a very expensive …
Two weeks ago, against the Dallas Cowboys, Nick Foles had one of the worst games any NFL quarterback has thrown (up) this year. Today, he’s in the NFL Hall of Fame. Literally – as we speak. Foles destroyed the Oakland Raiders, 49-20, last Sunday by tossing 7 touchdowns (3 to former pariah Riley Cooper), tying the league’s record for TDs in …
After three-and-half quarters of domination, the Stanford Cardinal barely outlasted a furious Oregon comeback, to win 26-20. Coach David Shaw said “in the back of my mind, all of us, everybody in this room, you all know they were going to make a run. That’s who this team is. We were ready for it, we knew it was going to …
Craig Strobeck Despite a gallant 4th-quarter comeback, for the third straight year the wheels came off on the drive for a national championship, in a November game that the Ducks were favored to win. Much like the USC game of 2011, Oregon was dominated for the first three quarters, finally pulled it together in the fourth but just plain came up …
Kevin Cline “Oregon only wins because of its offense.” Everyone knows that, even though it’s not true. In fact, it is so deeply ingrained in everyone’s mind, that outside of the state, people rarely even bother to consider the Ducks’ D. Regardless of how this season finishes, the 2013 college football campaign has a clear-cut top tier consisting of Alabama, …
