In the three games leading up to the showdown with Arizona State, Oregon committed 26 penalties for 320 yards. Against the Sun Devils, the Ducks committed only three penalties for 21 yards. Typically, that sort of improvement would be associated with a win. Not giving the opposing team extra yards and opportunities is usually a sign that a team is …
The Arizona Wildcats have a bad defense. They came in to this past Saturday giving up an average of over 37 points per game, good for 126th out of 130 FBS teams. The Oregon offense had two weeks to prepare for Arizona and was averaging over 38 points per game coming in to their match-up with the Wildcats. The Ducks …
Oregon football is back. There is no debating it. The last time Oregon won eight straight games, the Ducks were playing in the College Football Playoff National Championship Game. That team sported a nine-game winning streak headed in to the Ohio State match-up. Since then, the longest Duck winning streak is six games. Until now. Oregon had Auburn on the …
Oregon won big at USC on Saturday. They won so big that USC might end up searching for a new head coach. That was the basis of almost every question posed to Clay Helton after a massive home loss to the surging Ducks. One reporter asked Helton if he went in to the game thinking that he was coaching for his …
Oregon fixed its biggest flaw against Washington on Saturday — a flaw that goes back to 2015 as the Mark Helfrich era was beginning to crumble. A flaw that lost somewhere in the vicinity of 10 games over the last four seasons. Oregon made major coaching adjustments at halftime. There was no collapse or letting the game slip away, as …
Oregon beat Stanford on Saturday, and the result was never really in doubt … Well, to everyone except Stanford Head Coach David Shaw, apparently. Shaw didn’t think that his team was far from pulling off the upset, opening his press conference by saying: “The game boils down to five or six plays, and the score will look like we’re not …
It has been eight quarters and nine seconds since the Oregon Ducks gave up a touchdown. In the last two games, Oregon has allowed a total of nine points. Through three total games, Oregon is allowing only 272.3 yards per game. The Oregon defense has absolutely dominated the early season. Here are some reasons why. The Ferocious Front Seven Through …
It took 243 days of preparation to score 21 points. Twenty-one points would be unsatisfactory even if Oregon had had just one week to prepare for the Auburn Tigers. And Oregon had 34 weeks. Thirty-four weeks to leave last season’s abysmal offensive performances in the past. Rushing Woes CJ Verdell had a respectable 14 carries for 76 yards and a …
Just over two weeks remain until the Oregon Ducks open their season in a program-defining showdown against the Auburn Tigers. That game will be a strong indicator of what to expect from the Ducks in 2019. But it’s not the only tough matchup on their schedule. In advance of such a critical season opener, it feels like a good time …
During the 2018 football season, the Ducks had clear-cut leaders at running back with CJ Verdell and Travis Dye. The two accounted for 1,757 of Oregon’s 2,392 rushing yards — over 73 percent of the team’s total. While an impressive statistic, it was considered a down year in rushing. In 2017, the Ducks had 3,284 rushing yards, and the top three …
The 2018-2019 school year has concluded (not including summer, but who counts summer when there are no Duck sports?). The major sports are over for the year, and now it truly is the offseason. We have no scrappy basketball squads to watch on deep tournament runs, no underdog baseball teams to read about, no softball dance videos and no more …
The first article I ever wrote for FishDuck.com was about the issues Oregon would have against bigger receivers in 2018. It was an article that was proven right at times (see Stanford) and wrong at others (see Arizona State). Regardless, I felt the Ducks would be unable to overcome their lack of size at cornerback to be among the nation’s …
