For three years, Oregon had the same offensive coordinator in Marcus Arroyo. With Arroyo leaving for a head coaching gig in 2020, Oregon had to find a new man to run the offense. In came Joe Moorhead, architect of some fantastic Penn State offenses.
With a crazy fall season that still has yet to produce a schedule for the Ducks, what can we expect from the new-look offense?
Early returns for Texas are good after hiring Chris Ash. The Longhorns scored 59 points in their lone game of 2020 so far. Texas has a good chance to match its 35.2 ppg average from 2019, as their schedule gets tougher.
Miami football is perennially overrated. Their program hasn’t experienced any sustained success in nearly 20 years, and it often comes down to below average to downright awful output by their offenses. Rhett Lashlee has improved the Hurricanes’ scoring from 25.7 ppg in 2019 to 39 ppg in 2020.
Florida State imploded under Willie Taggert. The former Seminoles head coach failed to address any of the team’s many issues through recruiting, and didn’t improve the team in any discernable way in a year and a half at the helm. 2020 brought head coach Mike Norvell to Tallahassee, along with new offensive coordinator Kenny Dillingham. Early results have been less than stellar, with FSU losing their only contest 13-16 to Georgia Tech, a team that averaged fewer than 17 ppg in 2019. Getting outscored by that team is indicative of a broken offense.
Overall, we lack use cases for teams similar in talent level and competition to what the Ducks should expect, but the three above teams are at least a good starting point.
Ryan Robertson
Yuma, Arizona
Top Photo by Matt Zlaket
Natalie Liebhaber, the FishDuck.com Volunteer Editor for this article, works in the financial technology industry in Bozeman, Montana.
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Ryan Robertson is a defense contractor for the United States Marine Corps. A lifelong Duck fan from Grants Pass, he joined the Army out of high school. After four years as an Intelligence Analyst he decided it was time to further his education and pay more attention to his Ducks. One of Ryan’s first memories is of watching the Ducks, led by Joey Harrington, beating up on the Utah Utes in 2001. His grandfather ran track at Oregon in the ‘50s. He loves the Ducks, and has a passionate interest in reading every scrap of analysis centered around the football team.