Imagine being a linebacker tasked with making a split-second choice between taking on Outland Trophy winner Penei Sewell as a pulling tackle or trying to cover a speedy receiver like Mycah Pittman or Jaylon Redd out of the slot. The RPO (Run, Pass, Option) is an offensive scheme that mixes together different run and pass options based on defensive alignment …
Throughout the off-season, those of us wondering what exactly a Coach Joe Moorhead offense at Oregon will look like can find hints in the form of play selection from his previous stops. Though there will be collaboration with the other Ducks offensive coaches, there are a few staple plays that I’d be willing to bet Coach Moorhead calls next season. …
Before Andy Avalos introduced his brilliant defensive schemes last fall, Oregon’s glaring weakness was its inability to defend players in space. Ducks defenders often looked like ghosts pursuing pac-men all over the football field. Former defensive coordinator Jim Leavitt shored up some of the weaknesses, but it was Avalos who put a stop to the flow of embarrassing big plays …
Dana Altman is known for his spread offense and his match-up zone defense. While the offense gets adjusted every year to fit personnel, the defense has remained the same and is a key to Oregon’s success. Altman’s zone defense is different than most generic 2-3 zone defenses that teams face. It uses a lot of man-to-man principles to cover holes and …
When Coach Joe Moorhead was hired as the new offensive coordinator for the Oregon Ducks, folks started to wonder how often the quarterback would run in the new system. Some believed that the coaching staff would continue to curb the number of QB carries, while others believed that the end-of-season success with zone reads signaled a change. We would later …
There was much dismay among Ducks fans when Andy Avalos’s Boise State defense overwhelmed Marcus Arroyo’s offense in the 2017 Las Vegas Bowl. FishDuck fans across the nation fretted over Arroyo’s up-and-down, “roller coaster” tendencies. Little did we know it would be Avalos’s defensive brilliance that would redeem Arroyo’s roller-coaster offense just two years later. Even when Coach Eric Boles …
The pick-and-roll is one of the most frequently utilized offensive plays in all of basketball. In order to generate good shots out of the pick-and-roll, a team needs to execute three elements–adequate floor spacing, good screens, and adept ball-handling–and it needs to do so aggressively. While the men’s basketball team consistently struggles with their pick-and-rolls, often not even leading to …
The Oregon Ducks have found their guy in offensive coordinator Joe Moorhead. Coach Moorhead has found success at multiple levels, and his offense has been record-setting. The offense was created while he was the head coach of the Fordham Rams in the FCS. Over his final three seasons at Fordham, before he left to become the offensive coordinator for the …
Oregon’s now-former offensive coordinator Marcus Arroyo took us on a bit of roller coaster ride this year. While his offensive play-calling was at times boring and predictable, at others it looped and zoomed with the excitement of a Disneyland thrill ride. Extending his tenure to coach the Rose Bowl game, Arroyo came California Screamin’ out of the chute, engineering a …
Oregon’s “smash mouth” offense was put to the test in the 2020 Rose Bowl. The Ducks produced only 204 yards of total offense due to Wisconsin aligning one or two more defenders than Oregon could block when running the inside and outside zone read. Yet Oregon was able to adjust the assignment of one player in the backfield, producing all …
We know that Mario Cristobal is still relatively new as a head coach in a Power-Five conference, and many of us have sputtered about his learning curve. Strategies and tactics that many of us “Greybeards” have watched over the years with other coaches seemed to be either unknown or ignored by this coaching staff. Now granted, going from 7-6 to …
Oregon won the Pac-12 Championship game over Utah for a variety of reasons on both sides of the ball, but the most noted tactical change in this game was the running of Justin Herbert in the Outside Zone Read plays out of the Shotgun formation. Coach Ken Woody pointed it out in his analysis article, as did Eric Boles in …