Analysts love to dissect Oregon’s many packaged schemes and option runs, offensive plays designed to take advantage of whatever the defense throws at them, with an answer for just about anything and everything. There is, however, another part of any offense that is just as crucial, sometimes referred to as constraint plays. Constraint plays force a defense to hesitate, to think a little …
When looking at Oregon’s linebacker unit from 2014, a common theme often arises — inconsistency. FishDuck.com discussed it here and here, as others did here. In my experience, inconsistency typically stems from player inexperience and mental overload, both of which seemed to be confounding factors for the Oregon linebacking crew — as they were a bit inexperienced and working under a new …
For this 2015 Spring Game analysis, I will focus on some of the odd things that emerged in the game and some of the single plays that amused me. These do not have a theme like last week’s analysis, but more of random curious plays that I believe you will find interesting as well. It was tremendous fun seeing our …
I used to have a coach that said the key to winning football games was winning the war in the trenches. Obviously, there are many factors involved in winning football games, but it is hard to argue against the importance of controlling the line of scrimmage. Early in 2014, Oregon suffered multiple key injuries to the offensive line, resulting in a scenario …
(Converting from a 3-4 defense to 4-3 front is a topic that Oregon fans were interested in discussing–especially when Coach Mike Morris gave his perspective on it last week. He saw many posts on six different sites and message boards that contained some “points he disagreed with.” The Grizzled Ol’ Coach is not one to debate online with other readers, …
My friends–the Grizzled Ol’ Coach, Mike Morris, has some superb information concerning a potential conversion to a 4-3 defense at Oregon. Some of you will need to brace yourselves as you will read some things that you will NOT like or agree with, and in compromise for his shared wisdom, I retained them. They are his views, not mine. -Charles Fischer …
For many of you veteran coaches that read this site — did the term “Loaded Option” bring back some memories of the 70’s and 80’s in college football? Oregon is bringing back that wrinkle as a new variation to the Zone Read plays the Ducks operate from. It is a clever innovation emerging from the Helfrich/Frost offensive brain trust in Eugene, …
The transition from Chip Kelly to Mark Helfrich has been fascinating to observe in many areas, but now we can begin to compare their game plans, since Helf’ has now been heading Oregon for nearly two years. Are there similarities? What are the differences? I laid the groundwork in three videos two years ago that fans and coaches loved, thus I …
We are seeing more of the Mark Helfrich stamp upon the Oregon offense become evident through this 2014 season, yet an old Chip Kelly game plan has remained with the new head coach. Using plays in the playbook infrequently and then storing them for years at a time is becoming a norm for Helfrich and Offensive Coordinator Scott Frost. This …
Oregon has changed its foundation play, the Inside Zone Read, from how they ran it three years ago! I covered part of it in a recent discussion about the components of the Pistol offense being added to Oregon Spread Offense, but we need something that covers this essential play from the perspective of how Duck running backs learn to read …
New freshmen Devon Allen and Royce Freeman have made quite a splash with their performances to create a ton of interest by Oregon fans. However another freshman has been quietly building a resume’ this year on special teams and emerged with the biggest buzz from his last game against Cal. Normally I am doing some type of analysis on Tuesdays, but …
The phone lines between Coach Mike Morris (the Grizzled Ol’ Coach) and I have been burning up as we have been discussing the Oregon coaching staff’s introduction of an increasing amount of Pistol Offensive components into the Oregon Spread Offense. It was the Coach who called and noted the big step-up in Pistol variations against UCLA, but we hesitated to …