The question on everyone’s mind is “what happened to the Oregon Ducks?” after they were pasted by a mediocre Arizona team in Tucson. The Duck offense was somnolent and quarterback Justin Herbert sank into a fog, without getting any help from his offensive line, receivers or coaches. For the second week in a row, coach Mario Cristobal‘s physical running offense …
I’ve seen a lot of discussion over the last few weeks about why the Oregon Ducks are not putting up the kind of rushing numbers this season that they traditionally have. The two areas that are super easy for fans to grab at are scheme and play calling. Any time the offense has a letdown in the scoring column, you’ll be sure to …
The Duck defense couldn’t tackle or put pressure on the quarterback, and the offense had an Alamo Bowl half where it couldn’t get the snap count right or protect its own quarterback. The end result was a perfect storm for Washington State as the Cougars had their best day ever in knocking off a no-longer cocky flock of Ducks. Oregon …
In one of the most gut-wrenching Husky-Duck football games ever, coach Mario Cristobal saw more evidence his pursuit of a highly physical football team was headed in the right direction as Oregon topped tiring Washington 30-27 in overtime. A jam-packed crowd of over 58,000 was treated to a high-energy contest where no play was inconsequential. To be truthful, the Ducks …
This week, we’ll dive into one of the many benefits the Pistol formation has extended the Oregon Duck offense. On deck in this article is the variety of play-action pass looks the Pistol allows. Where all play-action passes from the Shotgun look pretty much the same, those from the Pistol can look very different, depending on the call. It even allows for a cool little misdirection that …
Oregon head coach Mario Cristobal realized his first Pac-12 victory Saturday with a resounding 42-24 win over the previously undefeated Cal Bears in Berkeley. His defense scored two touchdowns at crucial junctures of the game and finally shook the ball loose of its opponent five times, and also made a timely goal line stand for another turnover on downs. This …
There was much to wring our hands about in the Cal game, but there is also improvement on this team that doesn’t always get noticed. Although yesterday’s article was the primary discussion piece for the Cal game, I thought I would touch on a few other points that time and space did not allow for. There are many more aspects …
Even after playing a tough, physical game that was nearly perfect at times, Oregon found a way to lose to a shocked Stanford team that was dominated nearly the whole game, except at crucial times when the Ducks mentally and physically collapsed. The result was a 38-31 overtime victory for the Cardinal, who was lucky to get out Eugene alive. …
It was bound to happen: just as everyone was satisfied their Ducks were looking sharp and coordinated, everything went bonkers with Oregon staggering against San Jose State 35-22. The offensive line committed its first false start and the Ducks committed three major penalties — one of which was a 10-yard holding penalty which negated a 95-yard kickoff return for a touchdown …
The only things that marred the Ducks’ decisive win over Portland State last Saturday were a blocked extra point, a roughing the kicker penalty, a face mask penalty, a roughing the passer penalty and for the second straight game, a substitution penalty which was blamed on the coaching staff. Otherwise, it was a country whupping and the Vikings were never …
Today I want to stomp out the notion that the design of Oregon’s passing game under OC Marcus Arroyo is an unsophisticated attack that only sends receivers on long-developing deep routes. It wasn’t true last week, when the narrative started popping up across message boards, and it certainly isn’t true after the game against Portland State. After diagraming all of …
Alright … I was wrong in last week’s article. And not just once, but in a couple of places. I was erroneously applying prior knowledge of the Oregon Spread Offense to the new Oregon Offense that features the Pistol formation the majority of the time. In this article, I will apologize, own up to my errors (each of them) and …