It might seem silly to talk about dynasty the Monday after a disastrous victory against California. Just as the Ducks started to look competent on both sides of the ball, Justin Herbert, Royce Freeman, and Dillon Mitchell suffered injuries. All of this coming at a time when the Ducks are already thin at quarterback (Herbert’s backup wasn’t practicing at quarterback …
Have you ever had such conflicting feelings from an Oregon football game? Such despair at all the injuries and such pride in how the defense continues to improve in perhaps one of the greatest games by a Duck offensive line – when the team really needed it. Simply put … “I am pissed at the coaches, yet I am proud of what …
Fall is both football season and back-to-school time, so let’s grade head coaches in the Pac-12. They need most of the following for success: The late great Bum Phillips said it best about top football coaches: “He can take his’n and beat yourn and take yourn and beat his’n.” The best coaches adapt and mold players into cohesive units, finding …
If only Saturday’s loss had been to USC, Stanford, or Washington — against one of the Pac-12’s better programs — I’d feel much better about things. I could say that the Ducks are a legit top-25 team, that they scratched and clawed to the bitter end against one the conference’s premier teams, and almost pulled it off. I could say …
My wife burst into the infamous FishDuck.com ManCave late Saturday night and shouted, “What was that huge THUD out there?” I told her … “That was us Oregon fans coming back to Earth.” There is no sugar-coating that game. The Ducks lost to a 1-2 team known for poor defense and are known by all to be in the bottom half of …
Duck fans interested in time-traveling to Eugene may want to skip Sept. 20, 1975. That Saturday evening, Oregon and the San Jose Spartans played the most boring game in Autzen Stadium’s 50-year history. Yes, even worse than the infamous 0-0 “Toilet Bowl” versus OSU in 1983. The latter, amidst a November monsoon, was more an exercise in survival than an …
Oregon fans are thrilled with Willie Taggart’s 3-0 non-conference debut. In the first half of each game, the Ducks have scored 42 points, and have looked like they could run the table. But their second-half offense has looked sluggish and uninspired. Where is the juice in the second half? The inferior quality of Oregon’s non-conference schedule amplifies this concern. Southern Utah and talent-starved Wyoming …
Can you adjust to the new FishDuck? The one that has transformed from a cheerleader (always) of our beloved Ducks to a publisher that has views both positive and negative about what he sees? I know it is hard, as the former is how he’s been for the majority of the six years of the site. But this new, balanced …
The blue-collar work was back in the second half of Game 2 I would like to focus on the second half of this past weekend’s Nebraska game – on three points specifically. First our opponent stepped up and played better, our hats off to them – their blue-collar ethic rubbed-off on the Oregon defense. Second the coaches let us absolutely stall out on …
“Know they self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories.” This quote from Sun Tzu speaks not of the past, but of the future. Likewise, the Oregon Ducks football program must not only look forward, but move forward – as a coaching staff, as a team, and more importantly, as a culture. That forward-looking and moving culture must …
As the final gun sounded on Saturday and the usual post-game mad scramble took place across the field as the head coaches tried to find each other for their customary handshake, I half-expected the ending music to the movie “Rocky” to kick-in. After all, a relatively large underdog (13.5 points) had gotten the tar beat out of it early on …
Let me clarify that title: it was a perfect game in that we fans, the players and the Oregon coaching staff learned a ton while still winning the game. You do not learn as much from a Southern Utah game as you do in a game against Nebraska, hence this was ideal for the coaches as a wake-up call in …