This past season was historic as the Oregon football team was able to capture the Pac-12 Championship and win the Rose Bowl. This was not, however, a season that saw Oregon overwhelming opposing defenses with big plays, tempo, and dynamic playmakers as in years past. Rather, it was an offense without an elite wide receiver that utilized creativity in the …
Head Coach Dana Altman is the all-time coaching wins leader for Oregon Basketball. One of the winningest active coaches in NCAA Division 1 coaching, Altman has led his teams to 669 victories, ranking him in the Top Ten of active D-1 coaches. His combined record is 259-103 (.715) over 10 seasons at Oregon, surpassing prior leader Ernie Kent‘s record of 235 wins. Coach …
In one of his first interviews as Oregon’s new offensive coordinator, Coach Joe Moorhead touched on some of the similarities between his and the 2019 Ducks’ run game. He also mentioned that the most obvious differences in scheme would be in the passing game. The new Ducks air attack will be rooted in the West Coast pass concepts that Coach …
It is going to drive me crazy, like Willie Taggart running Justin Herbert between the tackles and the predictable injury (I called it a week in advance) occurring in 2017, trashing my season tickets. Injuries to QBs ruined seasons in 1988, 1991, 1993, 2005, 2007, 2015 … and then 2017, too? Going into 2018 and 2019, we fans did not want to see …
Last offseason, Payton Pritchard postponed his NBA career to come back and play one more season for the Ducks. Four-year seniors are hard to come by nowadays in college basketball, especially ones that start all four years at one school. It is safe to say that Pritchard has earned himself the honor of being an all time Duck, for any sport. …
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 …