Losing Was the Best Thing For Oregon

Ryan Robertson Editorials

Losing sucks. It makes players and coaches miserable, demoralizes fan bases and eliminates teams from the College Football Playoff conversation. Given that Oregon has never ended a season without a loss, Duck fans everywhere are fully aware of this fact. Losing has never felt good, especially to the Beavers. Especially when the Ducks should be so much better than their little brother.

But Jonathan Smith is a good in-game coach. He had the Beavers ready to play against a team that looked like they didn’t want to be on the field, at least defensively. Smith managed the clock better than Oregon’s head coach Mario Cristobal, and his team executed his game plan to perfection. It all resulted in a 41-38 loss for the Ducks.

A loss the Ducks desperately needed.

Coming off of a National Championship loss following the 2014 season, Oregon felt like they were due to take a step back in 2015. A solid defensive season and a historic offense got them to the championship, but most of the major contributors were gone. Marcus Mariota was in the NFL, significant portions of the secondary were gone, the offensive line lost key starters and there were holes all over the roster. Just about the only Ducks who returned were the team’s running backs.

The addition of a talented QB made it seem like Oregon could repeat as conference champions despite all of the losses. Unfortunately for Mark HelfrichVernon Adams Jr. was nearly transcendental. Willing the offense to be good enough to overcome abysmal defense and subpar game management in most of his starts.

Oregon has been losing in the trenches all season long, just like 2015.

In 2015, Oregon finished the season 9-4, with a historically bad showing in the second half of their bowl game. The year was viewed as disappointing, but the team showed that they could win as long as the offense was humming.

In 2016 the offense stopped humming. Adams had only prolonged the inevitable implosion of a team that couldn’t stop the run or the pass defensively with his incredible play on offense. The Ducks finished with the worst defense in school history and blew up the team. The lack of urgency by the staff to fix the defense could have been due to the team still winning. The Ducks were on a hangover from an almost-national-championship and the coaches couldn’t get the team motivated.

Flash forward to 2020. The Ducks are coming off of a dreamlike Rose Bowl win to end the 2019 season, and the defense looks flat. They went from forcing turnovers and sacks at a near record pace in 2019 to not being able to force anything in 2020. The defensive line looks uninspired, the secondary looks uninterested, and for some reason it feels like the linebackers aren’t ever on the field.

The Ducks played defense against Oregon State like it was 2015, but this time there was no QB injury to blame a loss on, like the Ducks did for almost every loss that year. The loss hurt, for sure, but if the staff can open their eyes to the fact that what they are doing on defense is simply not working, the loss will be better for the program than a 10 point win would have been.

We are at a junction as a program, either Cristobal and his staff are going to kick the defense into gear, or a Rose Bowl will be the signature win of his tenure. Just like Helfrich.

Ryan Robertson
Yuma, Arizona
Top Photo By Eugene Johnson

New 2024 FishDuck Publishing Schedule….

During the off-season the FishDuck.com publishing schedule will consist of articles on Mondays and Tuesdays. Do keep checking as new articles could be published during the week when a writer has something to say.

In mid-August of 2024, we will go back to the seven-days-a-week of articles during the football season as we did in the football season of 2023.

The Our Beloved Ducks Forum (OBD) is where we we discuss the article above and many more topics, as it is so much easier in a message board format over there.  At the free OBD forum we will be posting Oregon Sports article links, the daily Press Releases from the Athletic Department and the news coming out every day.

Our 33 rules at the free OBD Forum can be summarized to this: 1) be polite and respectful, 2) do not tell anyone what to think, feel or write, and 3) no reference of any kind to politics. Easy-peasy!

OBD Forum members….we got your back.  No Trolls Allowed!